Problem set 8: Mini-project¶

We've put some effort into building our collection (see problem set 7 for details and for links to texts and to metadata). Now it's time to learn something about it. You already have lots of excellent ideas for how to apply the tools we've learned about so far. It's also a good time of the semester to review what we have learned and practice applying it in less structured settings.

You will work by yourself or in a group of up to three people to complete a short project applying methods from the previous weeks to this collection. You will turn in the completed project as a single notebook (one submission per group) with the following sections:

Question(s). Describe what you wanted to learn. Suggest several possible answers or hypotheses, and describe in general terms what you might expect to see if each of these answers were true (save specific measurements for the next section). For example, many students want to know the difference between horror and non-horror, or between detective stories and horror fiction, but there are many ways to operationalize this question. You do not need to limit yourself to questions of genre. Note that your question should be interesting! If the answer is obvious before you begin, or if it's something the importance of which you cannot explain, your grade will suffer (a lot). (10 points)
Methods. Describe how you will use computational methods presented so far in this class to answer your question. What do the computational tools do, and how does their output relate to your question? Describe how you will process the collection into a form suitable for a model or algorithm and why you have processed it the way you have. (10 points)
Code. Carry out your experiments. Code should be correct (no errors) and focused (unneeded code from examples is removed). Use the notebook format effectively: code may be incorporated into multiple sections. (20 points)
Results and discussion. Use sorted lists, tables, and visual presentations to make your argument. Excellent projects will provide multiple views of results, and follow up on any apparent outliers or strange cases, including through careful reading of the original documents. (40 points)
Reflection. Describe your experience in this process. What was harder or easier than you expected? What compromises or negotiations did you have to accept to match the collection, the question, and the methods? What would you try next? (10 points)
Responsibility and resources consulted. Credit any online sources (Stack Overflow, blog posts, documentation) that you found helpful. (0 points, but -10 if missing)
- If you worked in a group, set up a group submission in CMS. Each group member should submit (via CMS) a separate text file in which they describe each member's (including their own) contributions to the project.
- Most people will turn in either a completed notebook for their solo project or a responsibility statement. The only people who will submit both files are those who are the designated submitter for their group. Don't worry if CMS warns you about a missing file (unless you're the group submitter).

Note that 10 points will be carried over from problem set 7.

We will grade this work based on accuracy, thoroughness, creativity, reflectiveness, and quality of presentation.

Scope: this is a mini-project, with a short deadline. We are expecting work that is consistent with that timeframe, but that is serious, thoughtful, and rigorous. This problem set will almost certainly require more time and effort than many of the others. For group work, the expected scope grows linearly with the number of participants.

0. Project team¶

List here the members of your project team, including yourself.

Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang (hh695)

1. Question(s)¶

In this mini project, I am interested in investigating "RQ: What may contribute to textual similarity among these novels?" Specifically, I look at whether the information we collected through the meta data sheet (i.e., the "INFO 3350 lit corpus 2020 - Sheet1" we built collectively in problem set 7) can inform us when/where we may find novels written in more similar laguages. In the following, I list down the variables I examine in this mini project:

Gender of the author: Will we see textual similarity shared among female or male authors? As a person who primarily grew up in Asian countries, I have no clue whether we will see textual similarity by the gender of authors. In Asian languages, there are a lot of female- or male-signaling words. Therefore, it is rather easy to tell whether a piece of text is written by female or male authors. However, I think this linguistic feature is not shared in English, so I am really curious to see whether we will see any difference in texts written by authors of different genders.
POV of the text being written: Can the point of view (first vs. third person perspectives) in written texts determine their similarity? My guess is if we remove common stopwords (which include pronouns) from the texts, we may less likely see textual differences between novels written in the first vs. the third person perspectives.
Genres of the novels (detective & horror): Will novels of the same genre (horror or detective) share greater textual similarity? I think we will see a lower degree of texutal similarity shared among detective novels, while a higher extent of similarity shared among horror novels. Persoanlly, I think the context of detective novels are more diverse, while horror novels commonly exploit a lot of texts to set up atmospheres that are creepy and uncomfortable.
Adaptation: Will we see certain linguistic commonality shared among novels that have been adapted to films or shows? I imagine novels involving a lot of action words and concrete descriptions for the set-ups of the scenes and characters may be more easily adapted to films or TV shows. Therefore, I expect to see some textual similarity among works that have been adapted on screens.
Sentiment: Do novels strongly demonstrating certain emotions (i.e., anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, negative, positive, sadness, surprise, trust) tend to use more similar languages? In order to set up a certain sentiment, the authors may need to use a lot of emotional words of the same type (e.g., to write a piece of sad story, a author may need to use a lot of sad words to convey the feeling). Therefore, I would imagine novels demonstrating strong sentiments of one type will share a higher level of textual commonality as well.

Additionally, given that sentiments in texts are more complex variables, compared to other binary ones, I perform further data exploration before looking into the textual similarity among each sentiment type, which I further elaborate in the below Methods section.

2. Methods¶

To conduct the present study, I carry out the following steps to analyze all the novels collected in our dataset:

Data exploration: Text Sentiments: As mentioned above, before looking at the textual similarity across the 138 novels we collected for this project, I first take a deeper dive into the sentiment scores of these novels. That is, I first calculate the 10 types of sentiment scores for each novel (i.e., anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, negative, positive, sadness, surprise, trust) using emolex and the sentiment scoring function we used in previous problem sets. I then look at whether each type of sentiment scores differ by (1) female vs. male authors, (2) first vs. third pov, (3) horror vs. non-horror novels, (4) detective vs. non-detective novels, (5) whether a novel has been adapted to films/shows or not, (6) the length of each novel (by total wordcount of the novel), and (7) the popularity of each novel (by the number of times it has been downloaded). I categorize novels by each of these variables and calculate the group means and standard deviations. Following, I conduct independent-sample t-tests to examine whether there is any significant difference between groups.
Examine textual similarity: I calculate the textual similarity by first vertorizing the texts of all novels, transferring to a feature matrix, and compute the pairwise cosine distance across all 138 novels in the dataset. In order to make multiple comparisons across different variables later on, I chose to calculate cosine distance, so that the output values all fall between the range of 0 and 1. I then examine whether the cosine distance between texts differ by (1) the gender of the authors, (2) the first vs. third person point-of-view, (3) the genre of the novels (detective & horror), and (4) whether the novels have been adapted to films or shows before. To examine whether the differences in cosine distances are significant, I again compute the means, standard deviations, and conduct independent-sample t-tests.
Cluster the texts + Examine textual similarity: My final take to examine textual similarity is to adopt a more open-ended approach. I run a clustering model using kmeans and then compare whether the cosine distance between texts differ significantly by each cluster (by conducting independent-sample t-tests to see whether the cosine distances of each cluster are significantly different). I then look at some sample texts from each cluster to see if I can get any further insights.

3. Code¶

3.0 Data Exploration: Text Sentiments¶

# Imports (all of them!)
from   collections import defaultdict
from   glob import glob
from   nltk import word_tokenize, sent_tokenize
import numpy as np
import os
import string

# Files and locations
novel_files = glob(os.path.join('data', '*.txt'))
emolex_file = os.path.join('data', 'others', 'emolex.txt')

# function to tokenize words
def tokenize_text(text, stopwords=None):
    '''
    Takes a string.
    Returns a list of tokenized sentences.
    '''
    tokenized_text = []
    for sent in sent_tokenize(text):
        tokens = word_tokenize(sent.lower())
        if stopwords != None:
            tokens = [token for token in tokens if token not in stopwords]
        tokenized_text.append(tokens)
    return tokenized_text

# helper function to read and parse the emolex file
def read_emolex(filepath=None):
    '''
    Takes a file path to the emolex lexicon file.
    Returns a dictionary of emolex sentiment values.
    '''
    if filepath==None: # Try to find the emolex file
        filepath = os.path.join('..','..','data','lexicons','emolex.txt')
        if os.path.isfile(filepath):
            pass
        elif os.path.isfile('emolex.txt'):
            filepath = 'emolex.txt'
        else:
            raise FileNotFoundError('No EmoLex file found')
    emolex = defaultdict(dict) # Like Counter(), defaultdict eases dictionary creation
    with open(filepath, 'r') as f:
    # emolex file format is: word emotion value
        for line in f:
            word, emotion, value = line.strip().split()
            emolex[word][emotion] = int(value)
    return emolex

# Get EmoLex data. Make sure you set the right file path above.
emolex = read_emolex(emolex_file)

# Sentiment scoring function
def sentiment_score(tokenized_text, lexicon):
    scores = defaultdict(int) # Store data for output
    token_count = 0 # Keep track of sentence length
    for sentence in tokenized_text:
        for token in sentence: # Iterate over tokens
            token_count += 1 # Increment token count
            for emotion in lexicon[token]: # Iterate over emotion types
                scores[emotion] += int(lexicon[token][emotion]) # Increment counts per emotion type
    if token_count > 0: # Do we have tokens?
        for emotion in scores:
            scores[emotion] /= token_count # Length normalize
    return scores

%%time
# Score all novels in the corpus

corpus_scores = {} # Dictionary to hold results
for novel in novel_files: # Iterate over novels
    with open(novel, 'r') as f:
        novel_text = f.read() # Read a novel as a string
    novel_label = os.path.split(novel)[1].rstrip('.txt') # Get convenience label for novel
    tokens = tokenize_text(novel_text) # Tokenize
    scores = sentiment_score(tokens, lexicon=emolex) # Score
    corpus_scores[novel_label] = scores # Record scores

CPU times: user 1min 36s, sys: 251 ms, total: 1min 36s
Wall time: 1min 37s

import pandas as pd
corpus_df = pd.DataFrame.from_dict(corpus_scores, orient='index')
corpus_df.reset_index(inplace=True)
corpus_df = corpus_df.rename(columns = {'index':'filename'})
corpus_df

# take a look at the average scores of different sentiment types across all novels.
corpus_df.mean().sort_values().plot.bar()

<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x1a223326a0>

# import the metadata spreadsheet with all novels' info
sheet1 = pd.read_csv('INFO 3350 lit corpus 2020 - Sheet1.csv')
sheet1 = sheet1.drop(['51', 'check_1', 'check_2'], axis=1)
sheet1['filename'] = sheet1['filename'].str.rstrip('.txt')
sheet1

# merge two dataframes (all sentiment scores + metadata)
new_df = pd.merge(corpus_df, sheet1, how='left', left_on='filename', right_on='filename')
new_df

3.0.1 Conduct an independent-sample t-test to see whether sentiment scores differ by gender

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

from scipy import stats
np.random.seed(12345678)

emotions = ['anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive',
               'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust']

for emo in emotions:
    print(emo)
    df_temp = new_df[[emo, 'gender']]
    df1 = df_temp.loc[df_temp['gender'] == 'female']
    x1 = df1[emo].to_numpy()
    df2 = df_temp.loc[df_temp['gender'] == 'male']
    x2 = df2[emo].to_numpy()
    (tt_val,p_ttest) = stats.ttest_ind(x1, x2)
    print('t-value: ', round(tt_val, 4))
    print('p-value: ', round(p_ttest, 4))
    print()

anger
t-value:  -0.1333
p-value:  0.8942

anticipation
t-value:  3.5393
p-value:  0.0006

disgust
t-value:  -0.0965
p-value:  0.9233

fear
t-value:  -0.7949
p-value:  0.4282

joy
t-value:  2.9416
p-value:  0.0039

negative
t-value:  0.314
p-value:  0.754

positive
t-value:  2.387
p-value:  0.0185

sadness
t-value:  0.1454
p-value:  0.8846

surprise
t-value:  3.4024
p-value:  0.0009

trust
t-value:  2.086
p-value:  0.039

3.0.2 Conduct an independent-sample t-test to see whether sentiment scores differ by POV

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

np.random.seed(12345678)

emotions = ['anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive',
               'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust']

for emo in emotions:
    print(emo)
    df_temp = new_df[[emo, 'pov']]
    df1 = df_temp.loc[df_temp['pov'] == 'first']
    x1 = df1[emo].to_numpy()
    df2 = df_temp.loc[df_temp['pov'] == 'third']
    x2 = df2[emo].to_numpy()
    (tt_val,p_ttest) = stats.ttest_ind(x1, x2)
    print('t-value: ', round(tt_val, 4))
    print('p-value: ', round(p_ttest, 4))
    print()

anger
t-value:  -0.0176
p-value:  0.986

anticipation
t-value:  -0.9452
p-value:  0.3464

disgust
t-value:  -0.1578
p-value:  0.8749

fear
t-value:  -0.0868
p-value:  0.931

joy
t-value:  0.3273
p-value:  0.744

negative
t-value:  -0.1402
p-value:  0.8887

positive
t-value:  -0.4501
p-value:  0.6534

sadness
t-value:  1.2606
p-value:  0.2098

surprise
t-value:  -0.662
p-value:  0.5092

trust
t-value:  -0.8085
p-value:  0.4203

3.0.3 Conduct an independent-sample t-test to see whether sentiment scores differ by novel genres and adaptation

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

from scipy import stats
np.random.seed(12345678)

features = ['horror', 'detective', 'adaptation']
emotions = ['anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive',
               'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust']

for f in features:
    print(f)
    print()
    for emo in emotions:
        print(emo)
        df_temp = new_df[[emo, f]]
        df1 = df_temp.loc[df_temp[f] == True]
        x1 = df1[emo].to_numpy()
        df2 = df_temp.loc[df_temp[f] == False]
        x2 = df2[emo].to_numpy()
        (tt_val,p_ttest) = stats.ttest_ind(x1, x2)
        print('t-value: ', round(tt_val, 4))
        print('p-value: ', round(p_ttest, 4))
        print()
    print('======================')

horror

anger
t-value:  0.8512
p-value:  0.3963

anticipation
t-value:  0.344
p-value:  0.7314

disgust
t-value:  1.1379
p-value:  0.2573

fear
t-value:  1.5473
p-value:  0.1243

joy
t-value:  0.1339
p-value:  0.8937

negative
t-value:  1.4262
p-value:  0.1563

positive
t-value:  0.3826
p-value:  0.7026

sadness
t-value:  2.5287
p-value:  0.0127

surprise
t-value:  -0.2316
p-value:  0.8173

trust
t-value:  -0.9296
p-value:  0.3544

======================
detective

anger
t-value:  -1.4385
p-value:  0.1528

anticipation
t-value:  -3.373
p-value:  0.001

disgust
t-value:  -1.6227
p-value:  0.1072

fear
t-value:  -1.6268
p-value:  0.1063

joy
t-value:  -3.0936
p-value:  0.0024

negative
t-value:  -2.0373
p-value:  0.0437

positive
t-value:  -2.3069
p-value:  0.0227

sadness
t-value:  -1.872
p-value:  0.0635

surprise
t-value:  -0.1725
p-value:  0.8633

trust
t-value:  -0.3837
p-value:  0.7018

======================
adaptation

anger
t-value:  0.8432
p-value:  0.4008

anticipation
t-value:  1.8338
p-value:  0.0691

disgust
t-value:  0.7567
p-value:  0.4506

fear
t-value:  0.1854
p-value:  0.8532

joy
t-value:  2.5308
p-value:  0.0126

negative
t-value:  0.4883
p-value:  0.6262

positive
t-value:  1.9311
p-value:  0.0557

sadness
t-value:  1.1025
p-value:  0.2724

surprise
t-value:  1.865
p-value:  0.0645

trust
t-value:  1.7867
p-value:  0.0764

======================

3.0.4 Check correlation between sentiment scores and wordcount

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

import scipy.stats
np.random.seed(12345678)

new_df = new_df.dropna()

x_col = "wordcount"
y_columns = ['anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive',
               'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust']

for col in y_columns:
    df_temp = new_df[["wordcount", col]]
    df_temp = df_temp[(np.abs(stats.zscore(df_temp)) < 3).all(axis=1)]
    
    x = np.asarray(df_temp['wordcount'].to_numpy(), dtype='float64')
    y = np.asarray(df_temp[col].to_numpy(), dtype='float64')
    
    r, p = scipy.stats.pearsonr(x, y)
    
    print(col)
    print('pearsons r = ', round(r,4))
    print('p-value = ', round(p, 4))
    print()

anger
pearsons r =  0.051
p-value =  0.5756

anticipation
pearsons r =  0.3483
p-value =  0.0001

disgust
pearsons r =  0.0385
p-value =  0.6723

fear
pearsons r =  -0.0946
p-value =  0.2937

joy
pearsons r =  0.3575
p-value =  0.0

negative
pearsons r =  0.0624
p-value =  0.4931

positive
pearsons r =  0.4101
p-value =  0.0

sadness
pearsons r =  0.0581
p-value =  0.527

surprise
pearsons r =  0.1847
p-value =  0.04

trust
pearsons r =  0.3377
p-value =  0.0001

3.0.5 Check correlation between sentiment scores and downloads

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

import scipy.stats
np.random.seed(12345678)

new_df = new_df.dropna()

x_col = "downloads"
y_columns = ['anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive',
               'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust']

for col in y_columns:
    df_temp = new_df[["downloads", col]]
    df_temp = df_temp[(np.abs(stats.zscore(df_temp)) < 3).all(axis=1)]
    
    x = np.asarray(df_temp['downloads'].to_numpy(), dtype='float64')
    y = np.asarray(df_temp[col].to_numpy(), dtype='float64')
    
    r, p = scipy.stats.pearsonr(x, y)
    
    print(col)
    print('pearsons r = ', round(r,4))
    print('p-value = ', round(p, 4))
    print()

anger
pearsons r =  -0.0315
p-value =  0.7304

anticipation
pearsons r =  0.0286
p-value =  0.7532

disgust
pearsons r =  0.0669
p-value =  0.4638

fear
pearsons r =  -0.0457
p-value =  0.6153

joy
pearsons r =  0.0659
p-value =  0.4689

negative
pearsons r =  0.0343
p-value =  0.7088

positive
pearsons r =  0.038
p-value =  0.6774

sadness
pearsons r =  0.1396
p-value =  0.1282

surprise
pearsons r =  -0.0572
p-value =  0.5314

trust
pearsons r =  0.0451
p-value =  0.6205

3.1 Word Distance¶

3.1.1 Compute cosine distances between all novels

from   sklearn.feature_extraction.text import CountVectorizer, TfidfVectorizer
from   sklearn.metrics.pairwise import euclidean_distances, cosine_distances

# vectorize the input text files
novel_vectorizer = TfidfVectorizer(
    input='filename',
    encoding='utf-8',
    strip_accents='unicode',
    lowercase=True,
    stop_words='english', 
    min_df=25,
    max_df=35.0,
    binary=False,
    norm='l2',
    use_idf=True
)

tfidf_matrix = novel_vectorizer.fit_transform(novel_files)

print("Matrix shape:", tfidf_matrix.shape)
print("\nFeature labels:", novel_vectorizer.get_feature_names())
print("\nDocument 0 vector:", tfidf_matrix[0].toarray())
print("\nDocument 0 words:", novel_vectorizer.inverse_transform(tfidf_matrix[0]))

Matrix shape: (138, 9878)

Feature labels: ['000', '10', '11', '12', '13', '14', '15', '16', '17', '18', '19', '20', '21', '22', '23', '24', '25', '27', '30', '31', '_a', '_all_', '_are_', '_can_', '_could_', '_did_', '_do_', '_had_', '_have_', '_he_', '_her_', '_him_', '_his_', '_i', '_i_', '_is_', '_know_', '_me_', '_must_', '_my_', '_not_', '_now_', '_she_', '_that_', '_the', '_they_', '_this_', '_was_', '_we_', '_were_', '_will_', '_would_', '_you', '_you_', '_your_', 'aback', 'abandon', 'abandoned', 'abandonment', 'abashed', 'abhorrence', 'abide', 'abilities', 'ability', 'abject', 'able', 'abnormal', 'aboard', 'abode', 'abominable', 'abreast', 'abroad', 'abrupt', 'abruptly', 'abruptness', 'absence', 'absent', 'absently', 'absolute', 'absolutely', 'absorb', 'absorbed', 'absorbing', 'abstract', 'abstracted', 'abstraction', 'absurd', 'absurdity', 'abundance', 'abundant', 'abuse', 'abused', 'abyss', 'accent', 'accents', 'accept', 'acceptable', 'acceptance', 'accepted', 'accepting', 'access', 'accessible', 'accident', 'accidental', 'accidentally', 'accidents', 'accommodate', 'accommodated', 'accommodation', 'accompanied', 'accompaniment', 'accompany', 'accompanying', 'accomplice', 'accomplish', 'accomplished', 'accomplishment', 'accomplishments', 'accord', 'accordance', 'accorded', 'according', 'accordingly', 'accosted', 'account', 'accounted', 'accounts', 'accumulated', 'accuracy', 'accurate', 'accurately', 'accursed', 'accusation', 'accusations', 'accuse', 'accused', 'accusing', 'accustomed', 'ache', 'ached', 'achieve', 'achieved', 'achievement', 'aching', 'acknowledge', 'acknowledged', 'acknowledging', 'acknowledgment', 'acquaintance', 'acquaintances', 'acquainted', 'acquiesced', 'acquiescence', 'acquire', 'acquired', 'acquisition', 'acquitted', 'acres', 'act', 'acted', 'acting', 'action', 'actions', 'active', 'actively', 'activities', 'activity', 'actor', 'actors', 'actress', 'acts', 'actual', 'actually', 'actuated', 'acute', 'acutely', 'acuteness', 'adapted', 'add', 'added', 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'unfit', 'unfolded', 'unfortunate', 'unfortunately', 'unfriendly', 'ungrateful', 'unguarded', 'unhappily', 'unhappiness', 'unhappy', 'unheard', 'unheeded', 'unholy', 'uniform', 'unimportant', 'unintelligible', 'uninteresting', 'union', 'unique', 'unite', 'united', 'universal', 'universally', 'universe', 'university', 'unjust', 'unkind', 'unknown', 'unless', 'unlike', 'unlikely', 'unlimited', 'unlock', 'unlocked', 'unlocking', 'unlucky', 'unmarried', 'unmistakable', 'unmistakably', 'unmoved', 'unnatural', 'unnaturally', 'unnecessarily', 'unnecessary', 'unnoticed', 'unobserved', 'unoccupied', 'unpleasant', 'unpleasantly', 'unpleasantness', 'unprepared', 'unprofitable', 'unprotected', 'unquestionably', 'unreal', 'unreasonable', 'unsatisfactory', 'unscrupulous', 'unseen', 'unsettled', 'unspeakable', 'unspoken', 'unsteady', 'unsuccessful', 'unsuspected', 'untidy', 'unto', 'untouched', 'unused', 'unusual', 'unusually', 'unutterable', 'unwelcome', 'unwholesome', 'unwilling', 'unwillingly', 'unwittingly', 'unwonted', 'unworthy', 'uplifted', 'upper', 'uppermost', 'upright', 'uproar', 'upset', 'upsetting', 'upside', 'upstairs', 'upturned', 'upward', 'upwards', 'urge', 'urged', 'urgency', 'urgent', 'urging', 'usage', 'use', 'used', 'useful', 'usefulness', 'useless', 'uses', 'ushered', 'using', 'usual', 'usually', 'utmost', 'utter', 'utterance', 'uttered', 'uttering', 'utterly', 'vacancy', 'vacant', 'vacation', 'vagabond', 'vague', 'vaguely', 'vain', 'vainly', 'valet', 'valley', 'valleys', 'valuable', 'value', 'valued', 'van', 'vanish', 'vanished', 'vanishing', 'vanity', 'vapour', 'varied', 'varieties', 'variety', 'various', 'vary', 'varying', 'vase', 'vases', 'vast', 'vastly', 'vault', 'vaulted', 'vaults', 've', 'vegetable', 'vegetables', 'vegetation', 'vehemence', 'vehement', 'vehemently', 'vehicle', 'veil', 'veiled', 'veils', 'vein', 'veins', 'velvet', 'venerable', 'vengeance', 'vent', 'venture', 'ventured', 'venturing', 'verdict', 'verge', 'verified', 'verily', 'veritable', 'verse', 'verses', 'version', 'vessel', 'vessels', 'vestibule', 'vestige', 'vexation', 'vexed', 'vi', 'vibration', 'vice', 'vices', 'vicinity', 'vicious', 'victim', 'victims', 'victorious', 'victory', 'view', 'viewed', 'viewing', 'views', 'vigil', 'vigilance', 'vigor', 'vigorous', 'vigorously', 'vigour', 'vii', 'viii', 'vile', 'villa', 'village', 'villages', 'villain', 'villains', 'vine', 'vines', 'violence', 'violent', 'violently', 'violet', 'violets', 'virgin', 'virtually', 'virtue', 'virtues', 'virtuous', 'visage', 'visible', 'visibly', 'vision', 'visions', 'visit', 'visited', 'visiting', 'visitor', 'visitors', 'visits', 'vista', 'vital', 'vitality', 'vivacity', 'vivid', 'vividly', 'voice', 'voiced', 'voices', 'void', 'volume', 'volumes', 'voluntarily', 'voluntary', 'volunteer', 'volunteered', 'vote', 'vow', 'vowed', 'vows', 'voyage', 'vulgar', 'vulnerable', 'waded', 'wages', 'wagon', 'wail', 'wailed', 'wailing', 'waist', 'waistcoat', 'wait', 'waited', 'waiter', 'waiting', 'waits', 'wake', 'waked', 'wakeful', 'wakened', 'wakes', 'waking', 'walk', 'walked', 'walking', 'walks', 'wall', 'walled', 'walls', 'wan', 'wand', 'wander', 'wandered', 'wanderer', 'wandering', 'wanderings', 'waning', 'want', 'wanted', 'wanting', 'wanton', 'wants', 'war', 'ward', 'wardrobe', 'warily', 'warm', 'warmed', 'warmer', 'warmest', 'warming', 'warmly', 'warmth', 'warn', 'warned', 'warning', 'warnings', 'warrant', 'wars', 'wary', 'wash', 'washed', 'washing', 'washington', 'wasn', 'waste', 'wasted', 'wasting', 'watch', 'watched', 'watcher', 'watches', 'watchful', 'watchfulness', 'watching', 'watchman', 'water', 'watering', 'waters', 'watery', 'wave', 'waved', 'wavered', 'wavering', 'waves', 'waving', 'wax', 'way', 'ways', 'weak', 'weaken', 'weakened', 'weakening', 'weaker', 'weakly', 'weakness', 'wealth', 'wealthy', 'weapon', 'weapons', 'wear', 'wearer', 'wearied', 'wearily', 'weariness', 'wearing', 'wearisome', 'wears', 'weary', 'weather', 'weaving', 'web', 'wedding', 'wedge', 'wednesday', 'wee', 'weed', 'weeds', 'week', 'weekly', 'weeks', 'weep', 'weeping', 'weigh', 'weighed', 'weighing', 'weight', 'weighty', 'weird', 'welcome', 'welcomed', 'welfare', 'went', 'wept', 'weren', 'west', 'western', 'westward', 'wet', 'whatsoever', 'wheel', 'wheeled', 'wheeling', 'wheels', 'whereabouts', 'whichever', 'whiff', 'whilst', 'whim', 'whimsical', 'whine', 'whining', 'whip', 'whipped', 'whirl', 'whirled', 'whirling', 'whisked', 'whiskers', 'whisper', 'whispered', 'whispering', 'whispers', 'whistle', 'whistled', 'whistling', 'white', 'whiteness', 'whiter', 'wholesome', 'wholly', 'wicked', 'wickedness', 'wide', 'widely', 'widened', 'widening', 'wider', 'widow', 'widower', 'width', 'wife', 'wig', 'wild', 'wilderness', 'wildest', 'wildly', 'wildness', 'wilful', 'wilfully', 'willed', 'william', 'willing', 'willingly', 'willingness', 'willow', 'wills', 'win', 'winced', 'wind', 'winding', 'window', 'windows', 'winds', 'windy', 'wine', 'wing', 'winged', 'wings', 'wink', 'winked', 'winking', 'winning', 'winter', 'wipe', 'wiped', 'wiping', 'wire', 'wired', 'wires', 'wiry', 'wisdom', 'wise', 'wisely', 'wiser', 'wisest', 'wish', 'wished', 'wishes', 'wishing', 'wistful', 'wistfully', 'wit', 'witch', 'withdraw', 'withdrawing', 'withdrawn', 'withdrew', 'withered', 'withheld', 'withhold', 'withstand', 'witness', 'witnessed', 'witnesses', 'witnessing', 'wits', 'witty', 'wives', 'woe', 'woes', 'woke', 'wolf', 'woman', 'womanhood', 'womanly', 'women', 'won', 'wonder', 'wondered', 'wonderful', 'wonderfully', 'wondering', 'wonderingly', 'wonders', 'wondrous', 'wont', 'wood', 'wooded', 'wooden', 'woodland', 'woods', 'wool', 'word', 'words', 'wore', 'work', 'worked', 'workers', 'working', 'workmen', 'works', 'world', 'worldly', 'worlds', 'worm', 'worms', 'worn', 'worried', 'worries', 'worry', 'worrying', 'worse', 'worship', 'worshipped', 'worst', 'worth', 'worthless', 'worthy', 'wouldn', 'wound', 'wounded', 'wounds', 'woven', 'wrap', 'wrapped', 'wrapping', 'wrath', 'wreath', 'wreaths', 'wreck', 'wrecked', 'wrench', 'wrenched', 'wretch', 'wretched', 'wretchedly', 'wretchedness', 'wriggled', 'wriggling', 'wring', 'wringing', 'wrinkled', 'wrinkles', 'wrist', 'wrists', 'writ', 'write', 'writer', 'writers', 'writes', 'writhed', 'writhing', 'writing', 'written', 'wrong', 'wronged', 'wrongs', 'wrote', 'wrought', 'wrung', 'xi', 'xii', 'xiii', 'xiv', 'xix', 'xv', 'xvi', 'xvii', 'xviii', 'xx', 'xxi', 'xxii', 'xxiii', 'xxiv', 'xxix', 'xxv', 'xxvi', 'xxvii', 'xxviii', 'xxx', 'xxxi', 'xxxiv', 'yard', 'yards', 'yarn', 'yawn', 'yawned', 'yawning', 'ye', 'year', 'yearning', 'years', 'yell', 'yelled', 'yelling', 'yellow', 'yes', 'yesterday', 'yield', 'yielded', 'yielding', 'yonder', 'york', 'young', 'younger', 'youngest', 'youngster', 'youth', 'youthful', 'zeal']

Document 0 vector: [[0. 0. 0. ... 0. 0. 0.]]

Document 0 words: [array(['chapter', 'asleep', 'miss', ..., 'clasp', 'tearful', 'caressing'],
      dtype='<U16')]

# compute cosine distances
cos = cosine_distances(tfidf_matrix)
cos

array([[0.        , 0.89153551, 0.83238751, ..., 0.83922266, 0.86021484,
        0.96006024],
       [0.89153551, 0.        , 0.67893565, ..., 0.66443198, 0.69404847,
        0.89957316],
       [0.83238751, 0.67893565, 0.        , ..., 0.61241514, 0.61326896,
        0.86289236],
       ...,
       [0.83922266, 0.66443198, 0.61241514, ..., 0.        , 0.65687646,
        0.88882161],
       [0.86021484, 0.69404847, 0.61326896, ..., 0.65687646, 0.        ,
        0.90611305],
       [0.96006024, 0.89957316, 0.86289236, ..., 0.88882161, 0.90611305,
        0.        ]])

3.1.2 Compare cosine distances by female vs. male authors

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

# get a list of index values of female author
female_df = new_df.loc[new_df['gender'] == 'female']
female_index = list(female_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
female_matrix = tfidf_matrix[female_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
female_cos = cosine_distances(female_matrix)



# follow the same process and get cosine similarity for male
male_df = new_df.loc[new_df['gender'] == 'male']
male_index = list(male_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
male_matrix = tfidf_matrix[male_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
male_cos = cosine_distances(male_matrix)

from scipy import stats
np.random.seed(12345678)

# get female descriptive stats
print('female mean: ', round(female_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(female_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# get male descriptive stats
print('male mean: ', round(male_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(male_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# perform an independent t-test
(tt_val,p_ttest) = stats.ttest_ind(female_cos.ravel(), male_cos.ravel(), 
                             equal_var=False)
print('t-value: ', round(tt_val, 4))
print('p-value: ', round(p_ttest, 4))

female mean:  0.5329
std:  0.1547

male mean:  0.48
std:  0.1426

t-value:  17.1143
p-value:  0.0

3.1.3 Compare word distance by first vs. third pov

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

# get a list of index values of frist pov  novels
first_df = new_df.loc[new_df['pov'] == 'first']
first_index = list(first_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
first_matrix = tfidf_matrix[first_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
first_cos = cosine_distances(first_matrix)



# follow the same process and get cosine similarity for third pov novels
third_df = new_df.loc[new_df['pov'] == 'third']
third_index = list(third_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
third_matrix = tfidf_matrix[third_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
third_cos = cosine_distances(third_matrix)

from scipy import stats
np.random.seed(12345678)

# get first pov descriptive stats
print('first pov mean: ', round(first_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(first_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# get third pov descriptive stats
print('third pov mean: ', round(third_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(third_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# perform an independent t-test
(tt_val,p_ttest) = stats.ttest_ind(first_cos.ravel(), third_cos.ravel(), 
                             equal_var=False)
print('t-value: ', round(tt_val, 4))
print('p-value: ', round(p_ttest, 4))

first pov mean:  0.5018
std:  0.1416

third pov mean:  0.5186
std:  0.1533

t-value:  -5.4654
p-value:  0.0

3.1.3 Compare word distance by horror vs. non-horror novels

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

# get a list of index values of horror novels
horror_df = new_df.loc[new_df['horror'] == True]
horror_index = list(horror_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
horror_matrix = tfidf_matrix[horror_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
horror_cos = cosine_distances(horror_matrix)



# follow the same process and get cosine similarity for non-horror novels
nonhorror_df = new_df.loc[new_df['horror'] == False]
nonhorror_index = list(nonhorror_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
nonhorror_matrix = tfidf_matrix[nonhorror_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
nonhorror_cos = cosine_distances(nonhorror_matrix)

from scipy import stats
np.random.seed(12345678)

# get horror novels descriptive stats
print('horror mean: ', round(horror_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(horror_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# get non-horror novels descriptive stats
print('non-horror mean: ', round(nonhorror_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(nonhorror_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# perform an independent t-test
(tt_val,p_ttest) = stats.ttest_ind(horror_cos.ravel(), nonhorror_cos.ravel(), 
                             equal_var=False)
print('t-value: ', round(tt_val, 4))
print('p-value: ', round(p_ttest, 4))

horror mean:  0.4826
std:  0.1387

non-horror mean:  0.5189
std:  0.1519

t-value:  -9.7009
p-value:  0.0

3.1.4 Compare word distance by detective vs. non-detective novels

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

# get a list of index values of detective novels
detective_df = new_df.loc[new_df['detective'] == True]
detective_index = list(detective_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
detective_matrix = tfidf_matrix[detective_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
detective_cos = cosine_distances(detective_matrix)



# follow the same process and get cosine similarity for non-detective novels
nondetective_df = new_df.loc[new_df['detective'] == False]
nondetective_index = list(nondetective_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
nondetective_matrix = tfidf_matrix[nondetective_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
nondetective_cos = cosine_distances(nondetective_matrix)

from scipy import stats
np.random.seed(12345678)

# get detective novels descriptive stats
print('detective mean: ', round(detective_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(detective_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# get non-detective stats
print('non-detective mean: ', round(nondetective_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(nondetective_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# perform an independent t-test
(tt_val,p_ttest) = stats.ttest_ind(detective_cos.ravel(), nondetective_cos.ravel(), 
                             equal_var=False)
print('t-value: ', round(tt_val, 4))
print('p-value: ', round(p_ttest, 4))

detective mean:  0.389
std:  0.1463

non-detective mean:  0.5352
std:  0.1398

t-value:  -32.3606
p-value:  0.0

3.1.5 Compare word distance by adpated vs. non-adapted novels

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

# get a list of index values of novels being adapted to shows/films
adpt_df = new_df.loc[new_df['adaptation'] == True]
adpt_index = list(adpt_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
adpt_matrix = tfidf_matrix[adpt_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
adpt_cos = cosine_distances(adpt_matrix)



# follow the same process and get cosine similarity for novels not being adpted to shows/films
nadpt_df = new_df.loc[new_df['adaptation'] == False]
nadpt_index = list(nadpt_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
nadpt_matrix = tfidf_matrix[nadpt_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
nadpt_cos = cosine_distances(nadpt_matrix)

from scipy import stats
np.random.seed(12345678)

# get adapted novels descriptive stats
print('adapted mean: ', round(adpt_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(adpt_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# get non-adapted novels descriptive stats
print('non-adapted mean: ', round(nadpt_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(nadpt_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# perform an independent t-test
(tt_val,p_ttest) = stats.ttest_ind(adpt_cos.ravel(), nadpt_cos.ravel(), 
                             equal_var=False)
print('t-value: ', round(tt_val, 4))
print('p-value: ', round(p_ttest, 4))

adapted mean:  0.4607
std:  0.1401

non-adapted mean:  0.5394
std:  0.1479

t-value:  -24.4936
p-value:  0.0

3.1.6 Compare word distance by sentiment scores

(Test results will be discussed in the following Results section)

emotions = ['anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive',
            'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust']

for emo in emotions:
    print(emo)
    print()
    
    m = new_df[emo].mean()
    # get a list of index values of novels with sentiment scores lower than average
    low_df = new_df.loc[new_df[emo] < m]
    low_index = list(low_df.index.values)

    # subset tfidf_matrix
    low_matrix = tfidf_matrix[low_index]

    # examine cosine dsitnace
    low_cos = cosine_distances(low_matrix)


    # get cosine similarity for novels with sentiment scores higher than average
    high_df = new_df.loc[new_df[emo] > m]
    high_index = list(high_df.index.values)

    # subset tfidf_matrix
    high_matrix = tfidf_matrix[high_index]

    # examine cosine dsitnace
    high_cos = cosine_distances(high_matrix)
    
    from scipy import stats
    np.random.seed(12345678)

    # get low sentiment descriptive stats
    print('low {} mean: '.format(emo), round(low_cos.mean(), 4))
    print('std: ', round(low_cos.std(), 4))
    print()

    # get high sentiment descriptive stats
    print('high {} mean: '.format(emo), round(high_cos.mean(), 4))
    print('std: ', round(high_cos.std(), 4))
    print()

    # perform an independent t-test
    (tt_val,p_ttest) = stats.ttest_ind(low_cos.ravel(), high_cos.ravel(), 
                                       equal_var=False)
    print('t-value: ', round(tt_val, 4))
    print('p-value: ', round(p_ttest, 4))
    print('============================')
    print()

anger

low anger mean:  0.4896
std:  0.1502

high anger mean:  0.5157
std:  0.1427

t-value:  -7.9385
p-value:  0.0
============================

anticipation

low anticipation mean:  0.5014
std:  0.1559

high anticipation mean:  0.5006
std:  0.1393

t-value:  0.2388
p-value:  0.8113
============================

disgust

low disgust mean:  0.4862
std:  0.1402

high disgust mean:  0.5291
std:  0.153

t-value:  -12.999
p-value:  0.0
============================

fear

low fear mean:  0.4784
std:  0.144

high fear mean:  0.5237
std:  0.1494

t-value:  -13.2213
p-value:  0.0
============================

joy

low joy mean:  0.5043
std:  0.1531

high joy mean:  0.4916
std:  0.1389

t-value:  3.7133
p-value:  0.0002
============================

negative

low negative mean:  0.4841
std:  0.1534

high negative mean:  0.5214
std:  0.1419

t-value:  -11.3566
p-value:  0.0
============================

positive

low positive mean:  0.5093
std:  0.151

high positive mean:  0.4867
std:  0.1387

t-value:  6.8814
p-value:  0.0
============================

sadness

low sadness mean:  0.5142
std:  0.1485

high sadness mean:  0.4896
std:  0.1474

t-value:  7.1214
p-value:  0.0
============================

surprise

low surprise mean:  0.5137
std:  0.1543

high surprise mean:  0.4962
std:  0.1369

t-value:  5.3338
p-value:  0.0
============================

trust

low trust mean:  0.5209
std:  0.1505

high trust mean:  0.4792
std:  0.1414

t-value:  12.8268
p-value:  0.0
============================

3.2 Clustering¶

In this part of the analysis, I conduct KMeans clustering to explore whether there are other features in texts that suggest differences in textual similarity. Specifically, I first cluster the novels using KMeans, then examine the cosine distances of texts in different clusters.

(Results will be further discussed in the following Results section.)

from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
X_novel = tfidf_matrix
# Perform k-Means clustering with n_clusters = 3
y_kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters=3).fit_predict(X_novel)

# Print the shape of your label vector
y_kmeans.shape

(138,)

# Plotting function
def plot_compare(X, labels, title, reduce=True, alpha=0.75):
    '''
    Takes an array of object data, a set of cluster labels, and a title string
    Reduces dimensions to 2 and plots the clustering.
    Returns nothing.
    '''
    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
    import seaborn as sns
    from   sklearn.decomposition import TruncatedSVD

    if reduce:
        # TruncatedSVD is fast and can handle sparse inputs
        # PCA requires dense inputs; MDS is slow
        coordinates = TruncatedSVD(n_components=2).fit_transform(X)
    else:
        # Optionally handle 2-D inputs
        coordinates = X
    
    # Set up figure
    fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(12,6))

    # Unlabeled data
    plt.subplot(121) # 1x2 plot, position 1
    plt.scatter(
        coordinates[:, 0], 
        coordinates[:, 1], 
        alpha=alpha, # Set transparency so that we can see overlapping points
        linewidths=0 # Get rid of marker outlines
    )
    plt.title("Unclustered data")

    # Labeled data
    plt.subplot(122)
    sns.scatterplot(
        x=coordinates[:, 0], 
        y=coordinates[:, 1],
        hue=labels,
        alpha=alpha,
        palette='viridis',
        linewidth=0
    )
    plt.title(title)
    plt.show()

# Plot k-Means results
plot_compare(X_novel, y_kmeans, 'k-Means labels', reduce=True)

Given that there are very few cases in Cluster 0, I re-run the KMeans clustering with n=2 clusters.

# Perform k-Means clustering with n_clusters = 2
y_kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters=2).fit_predict(X_novel)

# Plot k-Means results
plot_compare(X_novel, y_kmeans, 'k-Means labels', reduce=True)

# add clusteirng results as a new column
new_df['kmeans'] = y_kmeans.tolist()

# get a list of index values of novels in cluster 0
c0_df = new_df.loc[new_df['kmeans'] == 0]
c0_index = list(c0_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
c0_matrix = tfidf_matrix[c0_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
c0_cos = cosine_distances(c0_matrix)


# get a list of index values of novels in cluster 1
c1_df = new_df.loc[new_df['kmeans'] == 1]
c1_index = list(c1_df.index.values)

# subset tfidf_matrix
c1_matrix = tfidf_matrix[c1_index]

# examine cosine dsitnace
c1_cos = cosine_distances(c1_matrix)

# from scipy import stats
np.random.seed(12345678)

# get cluster 0 descriptive stats
print('cluster 0 mean: ', round(c0_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(c0_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# get cluster 1 descriptive stats
print('cluster 1 mean: ', round(c1_cos.mean(), 4))
print('std: ', round(c1_cos.std(), 4))
print()

# perform an independent t-test
(tt_val,p_ttest) = stats.ttest_ind(c0_cos.ravel(), c1_cos.ravel(), 
                             equal_var=False)
print('t-value: ', round(tt_val, 4))
print('p-value: ', round(p_ttest, 4))

cluster 0 mean:  0.572
std:  0.1498

cluster 1 mean:  0.4046
std:  0.1085

t-value:  61.4152
p-value:  0.0

def pull_samples(texts, labels, n=3):
    '''
    Takes lists of texts and an array of labels, as well as number of samples to return per label.
    Prints sample texts belonging to each label.
    '''
    texts_array = np.array(texts) # Make the input text list easily addressable by NumPy
    for label in np.unique(labels): # Iterate over labels
        print("Label:", label)
        sample_index = np.where(labels == label)[0] # Limit selection to current label
        print("Number of texts in this cluster:", len(sample_index), '\n')
        chosen = np.random.choice(sample_index, size=n) # Sample n texts with this label
        for choice in chosen:
            print("Sample text:", choice)
            print(texts_array[choice], '\n') # Print each sampled text
        print("###################################")

4. Results and discussion¶

4.1 Data Exploration: Text Sentiments¶

Per results of independent-sample t-tests and Pearson's correlation, I find several significant patterns in sentiment scores across the 138 novels in our dataset. I elaborate them further below:

Gender of authors: I consistently find scores of positive sentiments (i.e., anticipation, joy, positive, surprise, and trust) are significantly different by the gender of the authors. Specifically, novels composed by female authors tend to reflect significantly higher scores in these positive sentiments. However, when it comes to the use of negative sentiment texts (i.e., anger, disgust, fear, negative, and sadness), female and male authors do not differ in their use of languages in these novels.
POV: There is no significnat difference for any of the sentiment scores between novels written in first versus third person perspective.
Horror novels: Texts in horror novels show significantly higher scores in sadness than non-horror novels. I think this make a lot of sense given the context of horror novels, e.g., characters often experienced unfortunate incidents in horror stories. While other types of sentiment scores do not differ by horror vs. non-horror works.
Detective novels: Compared to non-detective works, detective novels demonstrate significantly higher scores in anticipation, joy, and positive sentiments. I don't have direct evidence to explain the findings, but I find this very intriguing. In particular, I think this corresponds with typical experiences when readers go through detective novels -- they look forward to reading how a mysterious case gets investigated and resolved, perceiving a sense of relief and joy when it gets closed at the end.
Adaptation: I find novels that has been adapted to films or shows show significantly higher scores in joy. Again, I don't have a direct evidence to explain the findings, but I think this probably means the audience favor happy endings over sad ones.
Wordcount: According to results of Pearson's correlation, sentiment scores of positive sentiments (i.e., anticipation, joy, surprise, and trust) positively correlate with the length of novels. However, the correlation is not strong (all Pearson's r coefficients < 0.5). As shown in the scatter plot and its fit line, wordcounts and sentiment scores don't seem to correlate with each other.
Downloads: How frequently a novel being downloaded does not significantly correlate with its sentiment scores at all, suggesting that both longer or shorter works can be popular. As shown in the scatter plot and its fit line, wordcounts and sentiment scores don't seem to correlate with each other.

These results can also been reflected in the visualizations below:

4.1.1 Bar charts of sentiment scores by gender, pov, novel genres, and adaptation

features = ['gender', 'pov', 'horror', 'detective', 'adaptation']
L = ['anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive',
               'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust']

for f in features:
    L.append(f)
    df_temp = new_df[L]
    df_temp.groupby([f]).mean().T.plot.bar(rot=30, title=f)

4.1.2 Scatterplot of sentiment scores by wordcount

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

new_df = new_df.dropna()

x_col = "wordcount"
y_columns = ['anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive',
               'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust']


fig, axs = plt.subplots(nrows=5, ncols=2)
fig.set_size_inches(20, 30)
fig.subplots_adjust(wspace=0.2)
fig.subplots_adjust(hspace=0.2)

for col, ax in zip(y_columns, axs.flatten()):
    # plot scatter plot
    df_temp = new_df[["wordcount", col]]
    df_temp = df_temp[(np.abs(stats.zscore(df_temp)) < 3).all(axis=1)]
    
    x = np.asarray(df_temp['wordcount'].to_numpy(), dtype='float64')
    y = np.asarray(df_temp[col].to_numpy(), dtype='float64')
    #ax = sns.regplot(x=x, y=y, color="g")
    ax.plot(x, y, 'o')
    m, b = np.polyfit(x, y, 1)
    ax.plot(x, m*x + b)
    
    ax.set_title(col, fontsize=18)
    ax.get_xaxis().set_visible(False)
    ax.set_xlabel('wordcount')
    ax.set_ylabel(col, fontsize=16)

plt.show()

4.1.3 Scatterplot of sentiment scores by downloads

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

new_df = new_df.dropna()

x_col = "downloads"
y_columns = ['anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive',
               'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust']


fig, axs = plt.subplots(nrows=5, ncols=2)
fig.set_size_inches(20, 30)
fig.subplots_adjust(wspace=0.2)
fig.subplots_adjust(hspace=0.2)

for col, ax in zip(y_columns, axs.flatten()):
    # plot scatter plot
    df_temp = new_df[["downloads", col]]
    df_temp = df_temp[(np.abs(stats.zscore(df_temp)) < 3).all(axis=1)]
    
    x = np.asarray(df_temp['downloads'].to_numpy(), dtype='float64')
    y = np.asarray(df_temp[col].to_numpy(), dtype='float64')
    #ax = sns.regplot(x=x, y=y, color="g")
    ax.plot(x, y, 'o')
    m, b = np.polyfit(x, y, 1)
    ax.plot(x, m*x + b)
    
    ax.set_title(col, fontsize=18)
    ax.get_xaxis().set_visible(False)
    ax.set_xlabel('downloads')
    ax.set_ylabel(col, fontsize=16)

plt.show()

4.2 Textual Similarity¶

In this section, I examine how textual similarity differ by features of the novels and their sentiment scores. Before looking at each variable, I produce this heatmap showing the cosine distance of all novels in the dataset. With the current color scale, the more similar (smaller cosine distances) the texts, the more white-yellow-ish color hue is shown on the heatmap. Conversely, the further the consine distances among the texts, the more dark-blue-ish color hue is shown on the heatmap.

import seaborn as sns; sns.set_theme()
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
fig.set_size_inches(7, 5)
ax = sns.heatmap(cos, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax.set_title('cosine distnaces of all novels', fontsize = 18)
ax

<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x1a24d0ba20>

4.2.1. Cosine distances by gender

Based on results of independent-sample t-tests, I found cosine distances among works of female authors are significantly greater than those written by male authors, suggesting the use of languages of female authors are more diverse than those of male authors.

fig, (ax1, ax2, ax3) = plt.subplots(1,3)
fig.set_size_inches(20, 5)

# produce heatmaps by gender
sns.heatmap(female_cos, ax=ax1, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax1.set_title('female cosine distnace', fontsize = 14)

sns.heatmap(male_cos, ax=ax2, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax2.set_title('male cosine distnace', fontsize = 14)


# calculate mean cosine distance of each row
cos_df = pd.DataFrame(cos)
col = cos_df.loc[: , :]
cos_df['cos'] = col.mean(axis=1)

# paste gender labels
cos_df['gender'] = new_df['gender'].values

# produce bar chart of cosine distance by gender
sns.barplot(x='gender', y='cos', data=cos_df, ax=ax3, capsize=.2)
ax3.set_title('cosine distnace by gender', fontsize = 14)

plt.show()

4.2.2. Cosine distances by POV

Based on results of independent-sample t-tests, I found cosine distances among works written in the third person perspective are significantly greater than those written the first person perspective.

fig, (ax1, ax2, ax3) = plt.subplots(1,3)
fig.set_size_inches(20, 5)

# produce heatmaps by POV
sns.heatmap(first_cos, ax=ax1, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax1.set_title('first pov cosine distnace', fontsize = 14)

sns.heatmap(third_cos, ax=ax2, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax2.set_title('third pov cosine distnace', fontsize = 14)

# paste POV labels
cos_df['pov'] = new_df['pov'].values

# produce bar chart of cos distance by POV
sns.barplot(x='pov', y='cos', data=cos_df, ax=ax3, capsize=.2)
ax3.set_title('cosine distnace by pov', fontsize = 14)

plt.show()

4.2.3. Cosine distances by genres (horror & detective)

In this part of the analysis, I look at whether novels of the same genre share greater textual similarity. Based on results of independent-sample t-tests, I find that cosine distances among horror novels are significantly shorter than other non-horror novels. Similarly, I also see that cosine distances among detective novels are also significantly shorter than other non-detective novels. Together, the results do show that novels of the same genre do seem to share greater textual similarity.

fig, (ax1, ax2, ax3) = plt.subplots(1,3)
fig.set_size_inches(20, 5)

# produce heatmaps
sns.heatmap(horror_cos, ax=ax1, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax1.set_title('horror novels cosine distnace', fontsize = 14)

sns.heatmap(nonhorror_cos, ax=ax2, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax2.set_title('non-horror cosine distnace', fontsize = 14)

# paste horror labels
cos_df['horror'] = new_df['horror'].values

# produce bar chart of cos distance by horror novels
sns.barplot(x='horror', y='cos', data=cos_df, ax=ax3, capsize=.2)
ax3.set_title('cosine distnace by horror genre', fontsize = 14)

plt.show()

fig, (ax1, ax2, ax3) = plt.subplots(1,3)
fig.set_size_inches(20, 5)

# produce heatmaps
sns.heatmap(detective_cos, ax=ax1, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax1.set_title('detective novels cosine distnace', fontsize = 14)

sns.heatmap(nondetective_cos, ax=ax2, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax2.set_title('non-detective cosine distnace', fontsize = 14)

# paste detective labels
cos_df['detective'] = new_df['detective'].values

# produce bar chart of cos distance by horror novels
sns.barplot(x='detective', y='cos', data=cos_df, ax=ax3, capsize=.2)
ax3.set_title('cosine distnace by detective genre', fontsize = 14)

plt.show()

4.2.4. Cosine distances by adaptation

Based on results of independent-sample t-tests, I find that cosine distances among novels that have been adapted to films or shows are significantly shorter than those never been adapted on screens.

fig, (ax1, ax2, ax3) = plt.subplots(1,3)
fig.set_size_inches(20, 5)

# produce heatmaps
sns.heatmap(adpt_cos, ax=ax1, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax1.set_title('adpated novels cosine distnace', fontsize = 14)

sns.heatmap(nadpt_cos, ax=ax2, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax2.set_title('non-adapted cosine distnace', fontsize = 14)

# paste adaptation labels
cos_df['adaptation'] = new_df['adaptation'].values

# produce bar chart of cos distance by horror novels
sns.barplot(x='adaptation', y='cos', data=cos_df, ax=ax3, capsize=.2)
ax3.set_title('cosine distnace by adaptation', fontsize = 14)

plt.show()

4.2.4. Cosine distances by adaptation

For each sentiment type (i.e., 'anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive', 'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust'), I split all novels into two groups, depending on whether each novel's sentiment score is below (low sentiment group) or above average (high sentiment group). I find that novels of high negative sentiments (i.e., anger, disgust, fear, negative, sadness) tend to use more diverse words (significantly greater cosine distances among texts). Conversely, novels of high positive sentiments (i.e., joy, positive, surprise) tend to share greater textual similarity (significantly shorter cosine distances among texts). Additionally, the distinction in textual distances btween the high vs. low sentiment groups is more prominent among works showing negative sentiments than those showing positive sentiments.

emotions = ['anger', 'anticipation', 'disgust', 'fear', 'joy', 'negative', 'positive',
            'sadness', 'surprise', 'trust']

for emo in emotions:
    fig, (ax1, ax2, ax3) = plt.subplots(1,3)
    fig.set_size_inches(30, 7)

    # produce heatmaps
    sns.heatmap(low_cos, ax=ax1, cmap="YlGnBu")
    ax1.set_title('low {} cosine distance'.format(emo), fontsize = 20)
    
    sns.heatmap(high_cos, ax=ax2, cmap="YlGnBu")
    ax2.set_title('high {} cosine distance'.format(emo), fontsize = 20)
    
    m = new_df[emo].mean()
    # get a list of index values of novels with sentiment scores lower than average
    low_df = new_df.loc[new_df[emo] < m]
    low_index = list(low_df.index.values)
    # subset tfidf_matrix
    low_matrix = tfidf_matrix[low_index]
    # examine cosine dsitnace
    low_cos = cosine_distances(low_matrix)

    # get cosine similarity for novels with sentiment scores higher than average
    high_df = new_df.loc[new_df[emo] > m]
    high_index = list(high_df.index.values)
    # subset tfidf_matrix
    high_matrix = tfidf_matrix[high_index]
    # examine cosine dsitnace
    high_cos = cosine_distances(high_matrix)
    
    df_temp = pd.DataFrame({
        'Sentiment': ['Low', 'High'],
        'Distance': [low_cos.mean(), high_cos.mean()]
    })
    sns.barplot(x='Sentiment', y="Distance", data=df_temp, ax=ax3)
    ax3.set_title('cosine distnace by {}'.format(emo), fontsize = 20)

    plt.show()

4.2.5. Cosine distances by cluster

Based on outcomes of KMeans clustering, I find that texts in Cluster 0 show significantly greater cosine distances than those in Cluster 1. I pull up some examples from each cluster, and besides the above-mentioned different features of novels, it seems to mee that texts in Cluster 0 have more quotes and dialogues than Cluster 1. Though this result needs further testing, but conceptually, I think it does make sense that conversational texts may use more diverse languages than descriptive texts.

fig, (ax0, ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1,3)
fig.set_size_inches(20, 5)

sns.heatmap(c0_cos, ax=ax0, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax0.set_title('cluster 0 cosine distance', fontsize = 14)

sns.heatmap(c1_cos, ax=ax1, cmap="YlGnBu")
ax1.set_title('cluster 1 cosine distance', fontsize = 14)

df_temp = pd.DataFrame({
        'Cluster': ['Cluster 0', 'Cluster 1'],
        'Distance': [c0_cos.mean(), c1_cos.mean()]
    })

sns.barplot(x='Cluster', y="Distance", data=df_temp, ax=ax2)
ax2.set_title('cosine distnace by cluster', fontsize = 14)

plt.show()

novel_text_list = []
for novel in novel_files:
    with open(novel, 'r') as f:
        one_novel_text = f.read()
    novel_text_list.append(one_novel_text)

# Pull k-Means samples
pull_samples(novel_text_list, y_kmeans, n=3)

Label: 0
Number of texts in this cluster: 66 

Sample text: 110
﻿I


One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found
himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.  He lay on
his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could
see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff
sections.  The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready
to slide off any moment.  His many legs, pitifully thin compared
with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he
looked.

"What's happened to me?" he thought.  It wasn't a dream.  His room,
a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully
between its four familiar walls.  A collection of textile samples
lay spread out on the table - Samsa was a travelling salesman - and
above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an
illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame.  It showed
a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright,
raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm
towards the viewer.

Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather.
Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane, which made him feel
quite sad.  "How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all
this nonsense", he thought, but that was something he was unable to
do because he was used to sleeping on his right, and in his present
state couldn't get into that position.  However hard he threw
himself onto his right, he always rolled back to where he was.  He
must have tried it a hundred times, shut his eyes so that he
wouldn't have to look at the floundering legs, and only stopped when
he began to feel a mild, dull pain there that he had never felt
before.

"Oh, God", he thought, "what a strenuous career it is that I've
chosen! Travelling day in and day out.  Doing business like this
takes much more effort than doing your own business at home, and on
top of that there's the curse of travelling, worries about making
train connections, bad and irregular food, contact with different
people all the time so that you can never get to know anyone or
become friendly with them.  It can all go to Hell!"  He felt a
slight itch up on his belly; pushed himself slowly up on his back
towards the headboard so that he could lift his head better; found
where the itch was, and saw that it was covered with lots of little
white spots which he didn't know what to make of; and when he tried
to feel the place with one of his legs he drew it quickly back
because as soon as he touched it he was overcome by a cold shudder.

He slid back into his former position.  "Getting up early all the
time", he thought, "it makes you stupid.  You've got to get enough
sleep.  Other travelling salesmen live a life of luxury.  For
instance, whenever I go back to the guest house during the morning
to copy out the contract, these gentlemen are always still sitting
there eating their breakfasts.  I ought to just try that with my
boss; I'd get kicked out on the spot.  But who knows, maybe that
would be the best thing for me.  If I didn't have my parents to
think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have
gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him
everything I would, let him know just what I feel.  He'd fall right
off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up
there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there,
especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is
hard of hearing.  Well, there's still some hope; once I've got the
money together to pay off my parents' debt to him - another five or
six years I suppose - that's definitely what I'll do.  That's when
I'll make the big change.  First of all though, I've got to get up,
my train leaves at five."

And he looked over at the alarm clock, ticking on the chest of
drawers.  "God in Heaven!" he thought.  It was half past six and the
hands were quietly moving forwards, it was even later than half
past, more like quarter to seven.  Had the alarm clock not rung? He
could see from the bed that it had been set for four o'clock as it
should have been; it certainly must have rung.  Yes, but was it
possible to quietly sleep through that furniture-rattling noise?
True, he had not slept peacefully, but probably all the more deeply
because of that.  What should he do now? The next train went at
seven; if he were to catch that he would have to rush like mad and
the collection of samples was still not packed, and he did not at
all feel particularly fresh and lively.  And even if he did catch
the train he would not avoid his boss's anger as the office
assistant would have been there to see the five o'clock train go, he
would have put in his report about Gregor's not being there a long
time ago.  The office assistant was the boss's man, spineless, and
with no understanding.  What about if he reported sick? But that
would be extremely strained and suspicious as in fifteen years of
service Gregor had never once yet been ill.  His boss would
certainly come round with the doctor from the medical insurance
company, accuse his parents of having a lazy son, and accept the
doctor's recommendation not to make any claim as the doctor believed
that no-one was ever ill but that many were workshy.  And what's
more, would he have been entirely wrong in this case? Gregor did in
fact, apart from excessive sleepiness after sleeping for so long,
feel completely well and even felt much hungrier than usual.

He was still hurriedly thinking all this through, unable to decide
to get out of the bed, when the clock struck quarter to seven.
There was a cautious knock at the door near his head.  "Gregor",
somebody called - it was his mother - "it's quarter to seven.
Didn't you want to go somewhere?"  That gentle voice! Gregor was
shocked when he heard his own voice answering, it could hardly be
recognised as the voice he had had before.  As if from deep inside
him, there was a painful and uncontrollable squeaking mixed in with
it, the words could be made out at first but then there was a sort
of echo which made them unclear, leaving the hearer unsure whether
he had heard properly or not.  Gregor had wanted to give a full
answer and explain everything, but in the circumstances contented
himself with saying: "Yes, mother, yes, thank-you, I'm getting up
now."  The change in Gregor's voice probably could not be noticed
outside through the wooden door, as his mother was satisfied with
this explanation and shuffled away.  But this short conversation
made the other members of the family aware that Gregor, against
their expectations was still at home, and soon his father came
knocking at one of the side doors, gently, but with his fist.
"Gregor, Gregor", he called, "what's wrong?"  And after a short
while he called again with a warning deepness in his voice: "Gregor!
Gregor!"  At the other side door his sister came plaintively:
"Gregor? Aren't you well? Do you need anything?"  Gregor answered to
both sides: "I'm ready, now", making an effort to remove all the
strangeness from his voice by enunciating very carefully and putting
long pauses between each, individual word.  His father went back to
his breakfast, but his sister whispered: "Gregor, open the door, I
beg of you."  Gregor, however, had no thought of opening the door,
and instead congratulated himself for his cautious habit, acquired
from his travelling, of locking all doors at night even when he was
at home.

The first thing he wanted to do was to get up in peace without being
disturbed, to get dressed, and most of all to have his breakfast.
Only then would he consider what to do next, as he was well aware
that he would not bring his thoughts to any sensible conclusions by
lying in bed.  He remembered that he had often felt a slight pain in
bed, perhaps caused by lying awkwardly, but that had always turned
out to be pure imagination and he wondered how his imaginings would
slowly resolve themselves today.  He did not have the slightest
doubt that the change in his voice was nothing more than the first
sign of a serious cold, which was an occupational hazard for
travelling salesmen.

It was a simple matter to throw off the covers; he only had to blow
himself up a little and they fell off by themselves.  But it became
difficult after that, especially as he was so exceptionally broad.
He would have used his arms and his hands to push himself up; but
instead of them he only had all those little legs continuously
moving in different directions, and which he was moreover unable to
control.  If he wanted to bend one of them, then that was the first
one that would stretch itself out; and if he finally managed to do
what he wanted with that leg, all the others seemed to be set free
and would move about painfully.  "This is something that can't be
done in bed", Gregor said to himself, "so don't keep trying to do
it".

The first thing he wanted to do was get the lower part of his body
out of the bed, but he had never seen this lower part, and could not
imagine what it looked like; it turned out to be too hard to move;
it went so slowly; and finally, almost in a frenzy, when he
carelessly shoved himself forwards with all the force he could
gather, he chose the wrong direction, hit hard against the lower
bedpost, and learned from the burning pain he felt that the lower
part of his body might well, at present, be the most sensitive.

So then he tried to get the top part of his body out of the bed
first, carefully turning his head to the side.  This he managed
quite easily, and despite its breadth and its weight, the bulk of
his body eventually followed slowly in the direction of the head.
But when he had at last got his head out of the bed and into the
fresh air it occurred to him that if he let himself fall it would be
a miracle if his head were not injured, so he became afraid to carry
on pushing himself forward the same way.  And he could not knock
himself out now at any price; better to stay in bed than lose
consciousness.

It took just as much effort to get back to where he had been
earlier, but when he lay there sighing, and was once more watching
his legs as they struggled against each other even harder than
before, if that was possible, he could think of no way of bringing
peace and order to this chaos.  He told himself once more that it
was not possible for him to stay in bed and that the most sensible
thing to do would be to get free of it in whatever way he could at
whatever sacrifice.  At the same time, though, he did not forget to
remind himself that calm consideration was much better than rushing
to desperate conclusions.  At times like this he would direct his
eyes to the window and look out as clearly as he could, but
unfortunately, even the other side of the narrow street was
enveloped in morning fog and the view had little confidence or cheer
to offer him.  "Seven o'clock, already", he said to himself when the
clock struck again, "seven o'clock, and there's still a fog like
this."  And he lay there quietly a while longer, breathing lightly
as if he perhaps expected the total stillness to bring things back
to their real and natural state.

But then he said to himself: "Before it strikes quarter past seven
I'll definitely have to have got properly out of bed.  And by then
somebody will have come round from work to ask what's happened to me
as well, as they open up at work before seven o'clock."  And so he
set himself to the task of swinging the entire length of his body
out of the bed all at the same time.  If he succeeded in falling out
of bed in this way and kept his head raised as he did so he could
probably avoid injuring it.  His back seemed to be quite hard, and
probably nothing would happen to it falling onto the carpet.  His
main concern was for the loud noise he was bound to make, and which
even through all the doors would probably raise concern if not
alarm.  But it was something that had to be risked.

When Gregor was already sticking half way out of the bed - the new
method was more of a game than an effort, all he had to do was rock
back and forth - it occurred to him how simple everything would be
if somebody came to help him.  Two strong people - he had his father
and the maid in mind - would have been more than enough; they would
only have to push their arms under the dome of his back, peel him
away from the bed, bend down with the load and then be patient and
careful as he swang over onto the floor, where, hopefully, the
little legs would find a use.  Should he really call for help
though, even apart from the fact that all the doors were locked?
Despite all the difficulty he was in, he could not suppress a smile
at this thought.

After a while he had already moved so far across that it would have
been hard for him to keep his balance if he rocked too hard.  The
time was now ten past seven and he would have to make a final
decision very soon.  Then there was a ring at the door of the flat.
"That'll be someone from work", he said to himself, and froze very
still, although his little legs only became all the more lively as
they danced around.  For a moment everything remained quiet.
"They're not opening the door", Gregor said to himself, caught in
some nonsensical hope.  But then of course, the maid's firm steps
went to the door as ever and opened it.  Gregor only needed to hear
the visitor's first words of greeting and he knew who it was - the
chief clerk himself.  Why did Gregor have to be the only one
condemned to work for a company where they immediately became highly
suspicious at the slightest shortcoming? Were all employees, every
one of them, louts, was there not one of them who was faithful and
devoted who would go so mad with pangs of conscience that he
couldn't get out of bed if he didn't spend at least a couple of
hours in the morning on company business? Was it really not enough
to let one of the trainees make enquiries - assuming enquiries were
even necessary - did the chief clerk have to come himself, and did
they have to show the whole, innocent family that this was so
suspicious that only the chief clerk could be trusted to have the
wisdom to investigate it? And more because these thoughts had made
him upset than through any proper decision, he swang himself with
all his force out of the bed.  There was a loud thump, but it wasn't
really a loud noise.  His fall was softened a little by the carpet,
and Gregor's back was also more elastic than he had thought, which
made the sound muffled and not too noticeable.  He had not held his
head carefully enough, though, and hit it as he fell; annoyed and in
pain, he turned it and rubbed it against the carpet.

"Something's fallen down in there", said the chief clerk in the room
on the left.  Gregor tried to imagine whether something of the sort
that had happened to him today could ever happen to the chief clerk
too; you had to concede that it was possible.  But as if in gruff
reply to this question, the chief clerk's firm footsteps in his
highly polished boots could now be heard in the adjoining room.
From the room on his right, Gregor's sister whispered to him to let
him know: "Gregor, the chief clerk is here."  "Yes, I know", said
Gregor to himself; but without daring to raise his voice loud enough
for his sister to hear him.

"Gregor", said his father now from the room to his left, "the chief
clerk has come round and wants to know why you didn't leave on the
early train.  We don't know what to say to him.  And anyway, he
wants to speak to you personally.  So please open up this door.  I'm
sure he'll be good enough to forgive the untidiness of your room."
Then the chief clerk called "Good morning,  Mr. Samsa". "He isn't
well", said his mother to the chief clerk, while his father
continued to speak through the door.  "He isn't well, please believe
me.  Why else would Gregor have missed a train! The lad only ever
thinks about the business.  It nearly makes me cross the way he
never goes out in the evenings; he's been in town for a week now but
stayed home every evening.  He sits with us in the kitchen and just
reads the paper or studies train timetables.  His idea of relaxation
is working with his fretsaw.  He's made a little frame, for
instance, it only took him two or three evenings, you'll be amazed
how nice it is; it's hanging up in his room; you'll see it as soon
as Gregor opens the door.  Anyway, I'm glad you're here; we wouldn't
have been able to get Gregor to open the door by ourselves; he's so
stubborn; and I'm sure he isn't well, he said this morning that he
is, but he isn't."  "I'll be there in a moment", said Gregor slowly
and thoughtfully, but without moving so that he would not miss any
word of the conversation.  "Well I can't think of any other way of
explaining it,  Mrs. Samsa", said the chief clerk, "I hope it's
nothing serious.  But on the other hand, I must say that if we
people in commerce ever become slightly unwell then, fortunately or
unfortunately as you like, we simply have to overcome it because of
business considerations."  "Can the chief clerk come in to see you
now then?", asked his father impatiently, knocking at the door
again.  "No", said Gregor.  In the room on his right there followed
a painful silence; in the room on his left his sister began to cry.

So why did his sister not go and join the others? She had probably
only just got up and had not even begun to get dressed.  And why was
she crying? Was it because he had not got up, and had not let the
chief clerk in, because he was in danger of losing his job and if
that happened his boss would once more pursue their parents with the
same demands as before? There was no need to worry about things like
that yet.  Gregor was still there and had not the slightest
intention of abandoning his family.  For the time being he just lay
there on the carpet, and no-one who knew the condition he was in
would seriously have expected him to let the chief clerk in.  It was
only a minor discourtesy, and a suitable excuse could easily be
found for it later on, it was not something for which Gregor could
be sacked on the spot.  And it seemed to Gregor much more sensible
to leave him now in peace instead of disturbing him with talking at
him and crying.  But the others didn't know what was happening, they
were worried, that would excuse their behaviour.

The chief clerk now raised his voice, "Mr. Samsa", he called to him,
"what is wrong? You barricade yourself in your room, give us no more
than yes or no for an answer, you are causing serious and
unnecessary concern to your parents and you fail - and I mention
this just by the way - you fail to carry out your business duties in
a way that is quite unheard of.  I'm speaking here on behalf of your
parents and of your employer, and really must request a clear and
immediate explanation.  I am astonished, quite astonished.  I
thought I knew you as a calm and sensible person, and now you
suddenly seem to be showing off with peculiar whims.  This morning,
your employer did suggest a possible reason for your failure to
appear, it's true - it had to do with the money that was recently
entrusted to you - but I came near to giving him my word of honour
that that could not be the right explanation.  But now that I see
your incomprehensible stubbornness I no longer feel any wish
whatsoever to intercede on your behalf.  And nor is your position
all that secure.  I had originally intended to say all this to you
in private, but since you cause me to waste my time here for no good
reason I don't see why your parents should not also learn of it.
Your turnover has been very unsatisfactory of late; I grant you that
it's not the time of year to do especially good business, we
recognise that; but there simply is no time of year to do no
business at all,  Mr. Samsa, we cannot allow there to be."

"But Sir", called Gregor, beside himself and forgetting all else in
the excitement, "I'll open up immediately, just a moment.  I'm
slightly unwell, an attack of dizziness, I haven't been able to get
up.  I'm still in bed now.  I'm quite fresh again now, though.  I'm
just getting out of bed.  Just a moment.  Be patient! It's not quite
as easy as I'd thought.  I'm quite alright now, though.  It's
shocking, what can suddenly happen to a person! I was quite alright
last night, my parents know about it, perhaps better than me, I had
a small symptom of it last night already.  They must have noticed
it.  I don't know why I didn't let you know at work! But you always
think you can get over an illness without staying at home.  Please,
don't make my parents suffer! There's no basis for any of the
accusations you're making; nobody's ever said a word to me about any
of these things.  Maybe you haven't read the latest contracts I sent
in.  I'll set off with the eight o'clock train, as well, these few
hours of rest have given me strength.  You don't need to wait, sir;
I'll be in the office soon after you, and please be so good as to
tell that to the boss and recommend me to him!"

And while Gregor gushed out these words, hardly knowing what he was
saying, he made his way over to the chest of drawers - this was
easily done, probably because of the practise he had already had in
bed - where he now tried to get himself upright.  He really did want
to open the door, really did want to let them see him and to speak
with the chief clerk; the others were being so insistent, and he was
curious to learn what they would say when they caught sight of him.
If they were shocked then it would no longer be Gregor's
responsibility and he could rest.  If, however, they took everything
calmly he would still have no reason to be upset, and if he hurried
he really could be at the station for eight o'clock.  The first few
times he tried to climb up on the smooth chest of drawers he just
slid down again, but he finally gave himself one last swing and
stood there upright; the lower part of his body was in serious pain
but he no longer gave any attention to it.  Now he let himself fall
against the back of a nearby chair and held tightly to the edges of
it with his little legs.  By now he had also calmed down, and kept
quiet so that he could listen to what the chief clerk was saying.

"Did you understand a word of all that?" the chief clerk asked his
parents, "surely he's not trying to make fools of us". "Oh, God!"
called his mother, who was already in tears, "he could be seriously
ill and we're making him suffer.  Grete! Grete!" she then cried.
"Mother?" his sister called from the other side.  They communicated
across Gregor's room.  "You'll have to go for the doctor straight
away.  Gregor is ill.  Quick, get the doctor.  Did you hear the way
Gregor spoke just now?"  "That was the voice of an animal", said the
chief clerk, with a calmness that was in contrast with his mother's
screams.  "Anna! Anna!" his father called into the kitchen through
the entrance hall, clapping his hands, "get a locksmith here, now!"
And the two girls, their skirts swishing, immediately ran out
through the hall, wrenching open the front door of the flat as they
went.  How had his sister managed to get dressed so quickly? There
was no sound of the door banging shut again; they must have left it
open;  people often do in homes where something awful has happened.

Gregor, in contrast, had become much calmer.  So they couldn't
understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to
him, clearer than before - perhaps his ears had become used to the
sound.  They had realised, though, that there was something wrong
with him, and were ready to help.  The first response to his
situation had been confident and wise, and that made him feel
better.  He felt that he had been drawn back in among people, and
from the doctor and the locksmith he expected great and surprising
achievements - although he did not really distinguish one from the
other.  Whatever was said next would be crucial, so, in order to
make his voice as clear as possible, he coughed a little, but taking
care to do this not too loudly as even this might well sound
different from the way that a human coughs and he was no longer sure
he could judge this for himself.  Meanwhile, it had become very
quiet in the next room.  Perhaps his parents were sat at the table
whispering with the chief clerk, or perhaps they were all pressed
against the door and listening.

Gregor slowly pushed his way over to the door with the chair.  Once
there he let go of it and threw himself onto the door, holding
himself upright against it using the adhesive on the tips of his
legs.  He rested there a little while to recover from the effort
involved and then set himself to the task of turning the key in the
lock with his mouth.  He seemed, unfortunately, to have no proper
teeth - how was he, then, to grasp the key? - but the lack of teeth
was, of course, made up for with a very strong jaw; using the jaw,
he really was able to start the key turning, ignoring the fact that
he must have been causing some kind of damage as a brown fluid came
from his mouth, flowed over the key and dripped onto the floor.
"Listen", said the chief clerk in the next room, "he's turning the
key."  Gregor was greatly encouraged by this; but they all should
have been calling to him, his father and his mother too: "Well done,
Gregor", they should have cried, "keep at it, keep hold of the
lock!"  And with the idea that they were all excitedly following his
efforts, he bit on the key with all his strength, paying no
attention to the pain he was causing himself.  As the key turned
round he turned around the lock with it, only holding himself
upright with his mouth, and hung onto the key or pushed it down
again with the whole weight of his body as needed.  The clear sound
of the lock as it snapped back was Gregor's sign that he could break
his concentration, and as he regained his breath he said to himself:
"So, I didn't need the locksmith after all". Then he lay his head on
the handle of the door to open it completely.

Because he had to open the door in this way, it was already wide
open before he could be seen.  He had first to slowly turn himself
around one of the double doors, and he had to do it very carefully
if he did not want to fall flat on his back before entering the
room.  He was still occupied with this difficult movement, unable to
pay attention to anything else, when he heard the chief clerk
exclaim a loud "Oh!", which sounded like the soughing of the wind.
Now he also saw him - he was the nearest to the door - his hand
pressed against his open mouth and slowly retreating as if driven by
a steady and invisible force.  Gregor's mother, her hair still
dishevelled from bed despite the chief clerk's being there, looked
at his father.  Then she unfolded her arms, took two steps forward
towards Gregor and sank down onto the floor into her skirts that
spread themselves out around her as her head disappeared down onto
her breast.  His father looked hostile, and clenched his fists as if
wanting to knock Gregor back into his room.  Then he looked
uncertainly round the living room, covered his eyes with his hands
and wept so that his powerful chest shook.

So Gregor did not go into the room, but leant against the inside of
the other door which was still held bolted in place.  In this way
only half of his body could be seen, along with his head above it
which he leant over to one side as he peered out at the others.
Meanwhile the day had become much lighter; part of the endless,
grey-black building on the other side of the street - which was a
hospital - could be seen quite clearly with the austere and regular
line of windows piercing its facade; the rain was still
falling, now throwing down large, individual droplets which hit the
ground one at a time.  The washing up from breakfast lay on the
table; there was so much of it because, for Gregor's father,
breakfast was the most important meal of the day and he would
stretch it out for several hours as he sat reading a number of
different newspapers.  On the wall exactly opposite there was
photograph of Gregor when he was a lieutenant in the army, his sword
in his hand and a carefree smile on his face as he called forth
respect for his uniform and bearing.  The door to the entrance hall
was open and as the front door of the flat was also open he could
see onto the landing and the stairs where they began their way down
below.

"Now, then", said Gregor, well aware that he was the only one to
have kept calm, "I'll get dressed straight away now, pack up my
samples and set off.  Will you please just let me leave? You can
see", he said to the chief clerk, "that I'm not stubborn and I
like to do my job; being a commercial traveller is arduous but
without travelling I couldn't earn my living.  So where are you
going, in to the office? Yes? Will you report everything accurately,
then? It's quite possible for someone to be temporarily unable to
work, but that's just the right time to remember what's been
achieved in the past and consider that later on, once the difficulty
has been removed, he will certainly work with all the more diligence
and concentration.  You're well aware that I'm seriously in debt to
our employer as well as having to look after my parents and my
sister, so that I'm trapped in a difficult situation, but I will
work my way out of it again.  Please don't make things any harder
for me than they are already, and don't take sides against me at the
office.  I know that nobody likes the travellers.  They think we
earn an enormous wage as well as having a soft time of it.  That's
just prejudice but they have no particular reason to think better of
it.  But you, sir, you have a better overview than the rest of the
staff, in fact, if I can say this in confidence, a better overview
than the boss himself - it's very easy for a businessman like him to
make mistakes about his employees and judge them more harshly than
he should.  And you're also well aware that we travellers spend
almost the whole year away from the office, so that we can very
easily fall victim to gossip and chance and groundless complaints,
and it's almost impossible to defend yourself from that sort of
thing, we don't usually even hear about them, or if at all it's when
we arrive back home exhausted from a trip, and that's when we feel
the harmful effects of what's been going on without even knowing
what caused them.  Please, don't go away, at least first say
something to show that you grant that I'm at least partly right!"

But the chief clerk had turned away as soon as Gregor had started to
speak, and, with protruding lips, only stared back at him over his
trembling shoulders as he left.  He did not keep still for a moment
while Gregor was speaking, but moved steadily towards the door
without taking his eyes off him.  He moved very gradually, as if
there had been some secret prohibition on leaving the room.  It was
only when he had reached the entrance hall that he made a sudden
movement, drew his foot from the living room, and rushed forward in
a panic.  In the hall, he stretched his right hand far out towards
the stairway as if out there, there were some supernatural force
waiting to save him.

Gregor realised that it was out of the question to let the chief
clerk go away in this mood if his position in the firm was not to be
put into extreme danger.  That was something his parents did not
understand very well; over the years, they had become convinced that
this job would provide for Gregor for his entire life, and besides,
they had so much to worry about at present that they had lost sight
of any thought for the future.  Gregor, though, did think about the
future.  The chief clerk had to be held back, calmed down, convinced
and finally won over; the future of Gregor and his family depended
on it! If only his sister were here! She was clever; she was already
in tears while Gregor was still lying peacefully on his back.  And
the chief clerk was a lover of women, surely she could persuade him;
she would close the front door in the entrance hall and talk him out
of his shocked state.  But his sister was not there, Gregor would
have to do the job himself.  And without considering that he still
was not familiar with how well he could move about in his present
state, or that his speech still might not - or probably would not -
be understood, he let go of the door; pushed himself through the
opening; tried to reach the chief clerk on the landing who,
ridiculously, was holding on to the banister with both hands; but
Gregor fell immediately over and, with a little scream as he sought
something to hold onto, landed on his numerous little legs.  Hardly
had that happened than, for the first time that day, he began to
feel alright with his body; the little legs had the solid ground
under them; to his pleasure, they did exactly as he told them; they
were even making the effort to carry him where he wanted to go; and
he was soon believing that all his sorrows would soon be finally at
an end.  He held back the urge to move but swayed from side to side
as he crouched there on the floor.  His mother was not far away in
front of him and seemed, at first, quite engrossed in herself, but
then she suddenly jumped up with her arms outstretched and her
fingers spread shouting: "Help, for pity's sake, Help!"  The way she
held her head suggested she wanted to see Gregor better, but the
unthinking way she was hurrying backwards showed that she did not;
she had forgotten that the table was behind her with all the
breakfast things on it; when she reached the table she sat quickly
down on it without knowing what she was doing; without even seeming
to notice that the coffee pot had been knocked over and a gush of
coffee was pouring down onto the carpet.

"Mother, mother", said Gregor gently, looking up at her.  He had
completely forgotten the chief clerk for the moment, but could not
help himself snapping in the air with his jaws at the sight of the
flow of coffee.  That set his mother screaming anew, she fled from
the table and into the arms of his father as he rushed towards her.
Gregor, though, had no time to spare for his parents now; the chief
clerk had already reached the stairs; with his chin on the banister,
he looked back for the last time.  Gregor made a run for him; he
wanted to be sure of reaching him; the chief clerk must have
expected something, as he leapt down several steps at once and
disappeared; his shouts resounding all around the staircase.  The
flight of the chief clerk seemed, unfortunately, to put Gregor's
father into a panic as well.  Until then he had been relatively self
controlled, but now, instead of running after the chief clerk
himself, or at least not impeding Gregor as he ran after him,
Gregor's father seized the chief clerk's stick in his right hand
(the chief clerk had left it behind on a chair, along with his hat
and overcoat), picked up a large newspaper from the table with his
left, and used them to drive Gregor back into his room, stamping his
foot at him as he went.  Gregor's appeals to his father were of no
help, his appeals were simply not understood, however much he humbly
turned his head his father merely stamped his foot all the harder.
Across the room, despite the chilly weather, Gregor's mother had
pulled open a window, leant far out of it and pressed her hands to
her face.  A strong draught of air flew in from the street towards
the stairway, the curtains flew up, the newspapers on the table
fluttered and some of them were blown onto the floor.  Nothing would
stop Gregor's father as he drove him back, making hissing noises at
him like a wild man.  Gregor had never had any practice in moving
backwards and was only able to go very slowly.  If Gregor had only
been allowed to turn round he would have been back in his room
straight away, but he was afraid that if he took the time to do that
his father would become impatient, and there was the threat of a
lethal blow to his back or head from the stick in his father's hand
any moment.  Eventually, though, Gregor realised that he had no
choice as he saw, to his disgust, that he was quite incapable of
going backwards in a straight line; so he began, as quickly as
possible and with frequent anxious glances at his father, to turn
himself round.  It went very slowly, but perhaps his father was able
to see his good intentions as he did nothing to hinder him, in fact
now and then he used the tip of his stick to give directions from a
distance as to which way to turn.  If only his father would stop
that unbearable hissing! It was making Gregor quite confused.  When
he had nearly finished turning round, still listening to that
hissing, he made a mistake and turned himself back a little the way
he had just come.  He was pleased when he finally had his head in
front of the doorway, but then saw that it was too narrow, and his
body was too broad to get through it without further difficulty.  In
his present mood, it obviously did not occur to his father to open
the other of the double doors so that Gregor would have enough space
to get through.  He was merely fixed on the idea that Gregor should
be got back into his room as quickly as possible.  Nor would he ever
have allowed Gregor the time to get himself upright as preparation
for getting through the doorway.  What he did, making more noise
than ever, was to drive Gregor forwards all the harder as if there
had been nothing in the way; it sounded to Gregor as if there was
now more than one father behind him; it was not a pleasant
experience, and Gregor pushed himself into the doorway without
regard for what might happen.  One side of his body lifted itself,
he lay at an angle in the doorway, one flank scraped on the white
door and was painfully injured, leaving vile brown flecks on it,
soon he was stuck fast and would not have been able to move at all
by himself, the little legs along one side hung quivering in the air
while those on the other side were pressed painfully against the
ground.  Then his father gave him a hefty shove from behind which
released him from where he was held and sent him flying, and heavily
bleeding, deep into his room.  The door was slammed shut with the
stick, then, finally, all was quiet.


II


It was not until it was getting dark that evening that Gregor awoke
from his deep and coma-like sleep.  He would have woken soon
afterwards anyway even if he hadn't been disturbed, as he had had
enough sleep and felt fully rested.  But he had the impression that
some hurried steps and the sound of the door leading into the front
room being carefully shut had woken him.  The light from the
electric street lamps shone palely here and there onto the ceiling
and tops of the furniture, but down below, where Gregor was, it was
dark.  He pushed himself over to the door, feeling his way clumsily
with his antennae - of which he was now beginning to learn the value
- in order to see what had been happening there.  The whole of his
left side seemed like one, painfully stretched scar,  and he limped
badly on his two rows of legs.  One of the legs had been badly
injured in the events of that morning - it was nearly a miracle that
only one of them had been - and dragged along lifelessly.

It was only when he had reached the door that he realised what it
actually was that had drawn him over to it; it was the smell of
something to eat.  By the door there was a dish filled with
sweetened milk with little pieces of white bread floating in it.  He
was so pleased he almost laughed, as he was even hungrier than he
had been that morning, and immediately dipped his head into the
milk, nearly covering his eyes with it.  But he soon drew his head
back again in disappointment; not only did the pain in his tender
left side make it difficult to eat the food - he was only able to
eat if his whole body worked together as a snuffling whole - but the
milk did not taste at all nice.  Milk like this was normally his
favourite drink, and his sister had certainly left it there for him
because of that, but he turned, almost against his own will, away
from the dish and crawled back into the centre of the room.

Through the crack in the door, Gregor could see that the gas had
been lit in the living room.  His father at this time would normally
be sat with his evening paper, reading it out in a loud voice to
Gregor's mother, and sometimes to his sister, but there was now not
a sound to be heard.  Gregor's sister would often write and tell him
about this reading, but maybe his father had lost the habit in
recent times.  It was so quiet all around too, even though there
must have been somebody in the flat.  "What a quiet life it is the
family lead", said Gregor to himself, and, gazing into the darkness,
felt a great pride that he was able to provide a life like that in
such a nice home for his sister and parents.  But what now, if all
this peace and wealth and comfort should come to a horrible and
frightening end? That was something that Gregor did not want to
think about too much, so he started to move about, crawling up and
down the room.

Once during that long evening, the door on one side of the room was
opened very slightly and hurriedly closed again; later on the door
on the other side did the same; it seemed that someone needed to
enter the room but thought better of it.  Gregor went and waited
immediately by the door, resolved either to bring the timorous
visitor into the room in some way or at least to find out who it
was; but the door was opened no more that night and Gregor waited in
vain.  The previous morning while the doors were locked everyone had
wanted to get in there to him, but now, now that he had opened up
one of the doors and the other had clearly been unlocked some time
during the day, no-one came, and the keys were in the other sides.

It was not until late at night that the gaslight in the living room
was put out, and now it was easy to see that his parents and sister had
stayed awake all that time, as they all could be distinctly heard as
they went away together on tip-toe.  It was clear that no-one would
come into Gregor's room any more until morning; that gave him plenty
of time to think undisturbed about how he would have to re-arrange
his life.  For some reason, the tall, empty room where he was forced
to remain made him feel uneasy as he lay there flat on the floor,
even though he had been living in it for five years.  Hardly aware
of what he was doing other than a slight feeling of shame, he
hurried under the couch.  It pressed down on his back a little, and
he was no longer able to lift his head, but he nonetheless felt
immediately at ease and his only regret was that his body was too
broad to get it all underneath.

He spent the whole night there.  Some of the time he passed in a
light sleep, although he frequently woke from it in alarm because of
his hunger, and some of the time was spent in worries and vague
hopes which, however, always led to the same conclusion: for the
time being he must remain calm, he must show patience and the
greatest consideration so that his family could bear the
unpleasantness that he, in his present condition, was forced to
impose on them.

Gregor soon had the opportunity to test the strength of his
decisions, as early the next morning, almost before the night had
ended, his sister, nearly fully dressed, opened the door from the
front room and looked anxiously in.  She did not see him straight
away, but when she did notice him under the couch - he had to be
somewhere, for God's sake, he couldn't have flown away - she was so
shocked that she lost control of herself and slammed the door shut
again from outside.  But she seemed to regret her behaviour, as she
opened the door again straight away and came in on tip-toe as if
entering the room of someone seriously ill or even of a stranger.
Gregor had pushed his head forward, right to the edge of the couch,
and watched her.  Would she notice that he had left the milk as it
was, realise that it was not from any lack of hunger and bring him
in some other food that was more suitable? If she didn't do it
herself he would rather go hungry than draw her attention to it,
although he did feel a terrible urge to rush forward from under the
couch, throw himself at his sister's feet and beg her for something
good to eat.  However, his sister noticed the full dish immediately
and looked at it and the few drops of milk splashed around it with
some surprise.  She immediately picked it up - using a rag,
not her bare hands - and carried it out.  Gregor was extremely
curious as to what she would bring in its place, imagining the
wildest possibilities, but he never could have guessed what his
sister, in her goodness, actually did bring.  In order to test his
taste, she brought him a whole selection of things, all spread out
on an old newspaper.  There were old, half-rotten vegetables; bones
from the evening meal, covered in white sauce that had gone hard; a
few raisins and almonds; some cheese that Gregor had declared
inedible two days before; a dry roll and some bread spread with
butter and salt.  As well as all that she had poured some water into
the dish, which had probably been permanently set aside for Gregor's
use, and placed it beside them.  Then, out of consideration for
Gregor's feelings, as she knew that he would not eat in front of
her, she hurried out again and even turned the key in the lock so
that Gregor would know he could make things as comfortable for
himself as he liked.  Gregor's little legs whirred, at last he could
eat.  What's more, his injuries must already have completely healed
as he found no difficulty in moving.  This amazed him, as more than
a month earlier he had cut his finger slightly with a knife, he
thought of how his finger had still hurt the day before yesterday.
"Am I less sensitive than I used to be, then?", he thought, and was
already sucking greedily at the cheese which had immediately, almost
compellingly, attracted him much more than the other foods on the
newspaper.  Quickly one after another, his eyes watering with
pleasure, he consumed the cheese, the vegetables and the sauce; the
fresh foods, on the other hand, he didn't like at all, and even
dragged the things he did want to eat a little way away from them
because he couldn't stand the smell.  Long after he had finished
eating and lay lethargic in the same place, his sister slowly turned
the key in the lock as a sign to him that he should withdraw.  He
was immediately startled, although he had been half asleep, and he
hurried back under the couch.  But he needed great self-control to
stay there even for the short time that his sister was in the room,
as eating so much food had rounded out his body a little and he
could hardly breathe in that narrow space.  Half suffocating, he
watched with bulging eyes as his sister unselfconsciously took a
broom and swept up the left-overs, mixing them in with the food he
had not even touched at all as if it could not be used any more.
She quickly dropped it all into a bin, closed it with its wooden
lid, and carried everything out.  She had hardly turned her back
before Gregor came out again from under the couch and stretched
himself.

This was how Gregor received his food each day now, once in the
morning while his parents and the maid were still asleep, and the
second time after everyone had eaten their meal at midday as his
parents would sleep for a little while then as well, and Gregor's
sister would send the maid away on some errand.  Gregor's father and
mother certainly did not want him to starve either, but perhaps it
would have been more than they could stand to have any more
experience of his feeding than being told about it, and perhaps his
sister wanted to spare them what distress she could as they were
indeed suffering enough.

It was impossible for Gregor to find out what they had told the
doctor and the locksmith that first morning to get them out of the
flat.  As nobody could understand him, nobody, not even his sister,
thought that he could understand them, so he had to be content to
hear his sister's sighs and appeals to the saints as she moved about
his room.  It was only later, when she had become a little more used
to everything - there was, of course, no question of her ever
becoming fully used to the situation - that Gregor would sometimes
catch a friendly comment, or at least a comment that could be
construed as friendly.  "He's enjoyed his dinner today", she might
say when he had diligently cleared away all the food left for him,
or if he left most of it, which slowly became more and more
frequent, she would often say, sadly, "now everything's just been
left there again".

Although Gregor wasn't able to hear any news directly he did listen
to much of what was said in the next rooms, and whenever he heard
anyone speaking he would scurry straight to the appropriate door and
press his whole body against it.  There was seldom any conversation,
especially at first, that was not about him in some way, even if
only in secret.  For two whole days, all the talk at every mealtime
was about what they should do now; but even between meals they spoke
about the same subject as there were always at least two members of
the family at home - nobody wanted to be at home by themselves and
it was out of the question to leave the flat entirely empty.  And on
the very first day the maid had fallen to her knees and begged
Gregor's mother to let her go without delay.  It was not very clear
how much she knew of what had happened but she left within a quarter
of an hour, tearfully thanking Gregor's mother for her dismissal as
if she had done her an enormous service.  She even swore
emphatically not to tell anyone the slightest about what had
happened, even though no-one had asked that of her.

Now Gregor's sister also had to help his mother with the cooking;
although that was not so much bother as no-one ate very much.
Gregor often heard how one of them would unsuccessfully urge another
to eat, and receive no more answer than "no thanks, I've had enough"
or something similar.  No-one drank very much either.  His sister
would sometimes ask his father whether he would like a beer, hoping
for the chance to go and fetch it herself.  When his father then
said nothing she would add, so that he would not feel selfish, that
she could send the housekeeper for it, but then his father would
close the matter with a big, loud "No", and no more would be said.

Even before the first day had come to an end, his father had
explained to Gregor's mother and sister what their finances and
prospects were.  Now and then he stood up from the table and took
some receipt or document from the little cash box he had saved from
his business when it had collapsed five years earlier.  Gregor heard
how he opened the complicated lock and then closed it again after he
had taken the item he wanted.  What he heard his father say was some
of the first good news that Gregor heard since he had first been
incarcerated in his room.  He had thought that nothing at all
remained from his father's business, at least he had never told him
anything different, and Gregor had never asked him about it anyway.
Their business misfortune had reduced the family to a state of total
despair, and Gregor's only concern at that time had been to arrange
things so that they could all forget about it as quickly as
possible.  So then he started working especially hard, with a fiery
vigour that raised him from a junior salesman to a travelling
representative almost overnight, bringing with it the chance to earn
money in quite different ways.  Gregor converted his success at work
straight into cash that he could lay on the table at home for the
benefit of his astonished and delighted family.  They had been good
times and they had never come again, at least not with the same
splendour, even though Gregor had later earned so much that he was
in a position to bear the costs of the whole family, and did bear
them.  They had even got used to it, both Gregor and the family,
they took the money with gratitude and he was glad to provide it,
although there was no longer much warm affection given in return.
Gregor only remained close to his sister now.  Unlike him, she was
very fond of music and a gifted and expressive violinist, it was his
secret plan to send her to the conservatory next year even though it
would cause great expense that would have to be made up for in some
other way.  During Gregor's short periods in town, conversation with
his sister would often turn to the conservatory but it was only ever
mentioned as a lovely dream that could never be realised.  Their
parents did not like to hear this innocent talk, but Gregor thought
about it quite hard and decided he would let them know what he
planned with a grand announcement of it on Christmas day.

That was the sort of totally pointless thing that went through his
mind in his present state, pressed upright against the door and
listening.  There were times when he simply became too tired to
continue listening, when his head would fall wearily against the
door and he would pull it up again with a start, as even the
slightest noise he caused would be heard next door and they would
all go silent.  "What's that he's doing now", his father would say
after a while, clearly having gone over to the door, and only then
would the interrupted conversation slowly be taken up again.

When explaining things, his father repeated himself several times,
partly because it was a long time since he had been occupied with
these matters himself and partly because Gregor's mother did not
understand everything the first time.  From these repeated explanations
Gregor learned, to his pleasure, that despite all their misfortunes
there was still some money available from the old days.  It was not
a lot, but it had not been touched in the meantime and some interest
had accumulated.  Besides that, they had not been using up all the
money that Gregor had been bringing home every month, keeping only a
little for himself, so that that, too, had been accumulating.
Behind the door, Gregor nodded with enthusiasm in his pleasure at
this unexpected thrift and caution.  He could actually have used
this surplus money to reduce his father's debt to his boss, and the
day when he could have freed himself from that job would have come
much closer, but now it was certainly better the way his father had
done things.

This money, however, was certainly not enough to enable the family
to live off the interest; it was enough to maintain them for,
perhaps, one or two years, no more.  That's to say, it was money
that should not really be touched but set aside for emergencies;
money to live on had to be earned.  His father was healthy but old,
and lacking in self confidence.  During the five years that he had
not been working - the first holiday in a life that had been full of
strain and no success - he had put on a lot of weight and become
very slow and clumsy.  Would Gregor's elderly mother now have to go
and earn money? She suffered from asthma and it was a strain for her
just to move about the home, every other day would be spent
struggling for breath on the sofa by the open window.  Would his
sister have to go and earn money? She was still a child of
seventeen, her life up till then had been very enviable, consisting
of wearing nice clothes, sleeping late, helping out in the business,
joining in with a few modest pleasures and most of all playing the
violin.  Whenever they began to talk of the need to earn money,
Gregor would always first let go of the door and then throw himself
onto the cool, leather sofa next to it, as he became quite hot with
shame and regret.

He would often lie there the whole night through, not sleeping a
wink but scratching at the leather for hours on end.  Or he might go
to all the effort of pushing a chair to the window, climbing up onto
the sill and, propped up in the chair, leaning on the window to
stare out of it.  He had used to feel a great sense of freedom from
doing this, but doing it now was obviously something more remembered
than experienced,  as what he actually saw in this way was becoming
less distinct every day, even things that were quite near; he had
used to curse the ever-present view of the hospital across the
street, but now he could not see it at all, and if he had not known
that he lived in Charlottenstrasse, which was a quiet street despite
being in the middle of the city, he could have thought that he was
looking out the window at a barren waste where the grey sky and the
grey earth mingled inseparably.  His observant sister only needed to
notice the chair twice before she would always push it back to its
exact position by the window after she had tidied up the room, and
even left the inner pane of the window open from then on.

If Gregor had only been able to speak to his sister and thank her
for all that she had to do for him it would have been easier for him
to bear it; but as it was it caused him pain.  His sister,
naturally, tried as far as possible to pretend there was nothing
burdensome about it, and the longer it went on, of course, the
better she was able to do so, but as time went by Gregor was also
able to see through it all so much better.  It had even become very
unpleasant for him, now, whenever she entered the room.  No sooner
had she come in than she would quickly close the door as a
precaution so that no-one would have to suffer the view into
Gregor's room, then she would go straight to the window and pull it
hurriedly open almost as if she were suffocating.  Even if it was
cold, she would stay at the window breathing deeply for a little
while.  She would alarm Gregor twice a day with this running about
and noise making; he would stay under the couch shivering the whole
while, knowing full well that she would certainly have liked to
spare him this ordeal, but it was impossible for her to be in the
same room with him with the windows closed.

One day, about a month after Gregor's transformation when his sister
no longer had any particular reason to be shocked at his appearance,
she came into the room a little earlier than usual and found him
still staring out the window, motionless, and just where he would be
most horrible.  In itself, his sister's not coming into the room
would have been no surprise for Gregor as it would have been
difficult for her to immediately open the window while he was still
there, but not only did she not come in, she went straight back and
closed the door behind her, a stranger would have thought he had
threatened her and tried to bite her.  Gregor went straight to hide
himself under the couch, of course, but he had to wait until midday
before his sister came back and she seemed much more uneasy than
usual.  It made him realise that she still found his appearance
unbearable and would continue to do so, she probably even had to
overcome the urge to flee when she saw the little bit of him that
protruded from under the couch.  One day, in order to spare her even
this sight, he spent four hours carrying the bedsheet over to the
couch on his back and arranged it so that he was completely covered
and his sister would not be able to see him even if she bent down.
If she did not think this sheet was necessary then all she had to do
was take it off again, as it was clear enough that it was no
pleasure for Gregor to cut himself off so completely.  She left the
sheet where it was.  Gregor even thought he glimpsed a look of
gratitude one time when he carefully looked out from under the sheet
to see how his sister liked the new arrangement.

For the first fourteen days, Gregor's parents could not bring
themselves to come into the room to see him.  He would often hear
them say how they appreciated all the new work his sister was doing
even though, before, they had seen her as a girl who was somewhat
useless and frequently been annoyed with her.  But now the two of
them, father and mother, would often both wait outside the door of
Gregor's room while his sister tidied up in there, and as soon as
she went out again she would have to tell them exactly how
everything looked, what Gregor had eaten, how he had behaved this
time and whether, perhaps, any slight improvement could be seen.
His mother also wanted to go in and visit Gregor relatively soon but
his father and sister at first persuaded her against it.  Gregor
listened very closely to all this, and approved fully.  Later,
though, she had to be held back by force, which made her call out:
"Let me go and see Gregor, he is my unfortunate son! Can't you
understand I have to see him?", and Gregor would think to himself
that maybe it would be better if his mother came in, not every day
of course, but one day a week, perhaps; she could understand
everything much better than his sister who, for all her courage, was
still just a child after all, and really might not have had an
adult's appreciation of the burdensome job she had taken on.

Gregor's wish to see his mother was soon realised.  Out of
consideration for his parents, Gregor wanted to avoid being seen at
the window during the day, the few square meters of the floor did
not give him much room to crawl about, it was hard to just lie
quietly through the night, his food soon stopped giving him any
pleasure at all, and so, to entertain himself, he got into the habit
of crawling up and down the walls and ceiling.  He was especially
fond of hanging from the ceiling; it was quite different from lying
on the floor; he could breathe more freely; his body had a light
swing to it; and up there, relaxed and almost happy, it might happen
that he would surprise even himself by letting go of the ceiling and
landing on the floor with a crash.  But now, of course, he had far
better control of his body than before and, even with a fall as
great as that, caused himself no damage.  Very soon his sister
noticed Gregor's new way of entertaining himself - he had, after
all, left traces of the adhesive from his feet as he crawled about -
and got it into her head to make it as easy as possible for him by
removing the furniture that got in his way, especially the chest of
drawers and the desk.  Now, this was not something that she would be
able to do by herself; she did not dare to ask for help from her
father; the sixteen year old maid had carried on bravely since the
cook had left but she certainly would not have helped in this, she
had even asked to be allowed to keep the kitchen locked at all times
and never to have to open the door unless it was especially
important; so his sister had no choice but to choose some time when
Gregor's father was not there and fetch his mother to help her.  As
she approached the room, Gregor could hear his mother express her
joy, but once at the door she went silent.  First, of course, his
sister came in and looked round to see that everything in the room
was alright; and only then did she let her mother enter.  Gregor had
hurriedly pulled the sheet down lower over the couch and put more
folds into it so that everything really looked as if it had just
been thrown down by chance.  Gregor also refrained, this time, from
spying out from under the sheet; he gave up the chance to see his
mother until later and was simply glad that she had come.  "You can
come in, he can't be seen", said his sister, obviously leading her
in by the hand.  The old chest of drawers was too heavy for a pair
of feeble women to be heaving about, but Gregor listened as they
pushed it from its place, his sister always taking on the heaviest
part of the work for herself and ignoring her mother's warnings that
she would strain herself.  This lasted a very long time.  After
labouring at it for fifteen minutes or more his mother said it would
be better to leave the chest where it was, for one thing it was too
heavy for them to get the job finished before Gregor's father got
home and leaving it in the middle of the room it would be in his way
even more, and for another thing it wasn't even sure that taking the
furniture away would really be any help to him.  She thought just
the opposite; the sight of the bare walls saddened her right to her
heart; and why wouldn't Gregor feel the same way about it, he'd been
used to this furniture in his room for a long time and it would make
him feel abandoned to be in an empty room like that.  Then, quietly,
almost whispering as if wanting Gregor (whose whereabouts she did
not know) to hear not even the tone of her voice, as she was
convinced that he did not understand her words, she added "and by
taking the furniture away, won't it seem like we're showing that
we've given up all hope of improvement and we're abandoning him to
cope for himself? I think it'd be best to leave the room exactly the
way it was before so that when Gregor comes back to us again he'll
find everything unchanged and he'll be able to forget the time in
between all the easier".

Hearing these words from his mother made Gregor realise that the
lack of any direct human communication, along with the monotonous
life led by the family during these two months, must have made him
confused - he could think of no other way of explaining to himself
why he had seriously wanted his room emptied out.  Had he really
wanted to transform his room into a cave, a warm room fitted out
with the nice furniture he had inherited? That would have let him
crawl around unimpeded in any direction, but it would also have let
him quickly forget his past when he had still been human.  He had
come very close to forgetting, and it had only been the voice of his
mother, unheard for so long, that had shaken him out of it.  Nothing
should be removed; everything had to stay; he could not do without
the good influence the furniture had on his condition; and if the
furniture made it difficult for him to crawl about mindlessly that
was not a loss but a great advantage.

His sister, unfortunately, did not agree; she had become used to the
idea, not without reason, that she was Gregor's spokesman to his
parents about the things that concerned him.  This meant that his
mother's advice now was sufficient reason for her to insist on
removing not only the chest of drawers and the desk, as she had
thought at first, but all the furniture apart from the all-important
couch.  It was more than childish perversity, of course, or the
unexpected confidence she had recently acquired, that made her
insist; she had indeed noticed that Gregor needed a lot of room to
crawl about in, whereas the furniture, as far as anyone could see,
was of no use to him at all.  Girls of that age, though, do become
enthusiastic about things and feel they must get their way whenever
they can.  Perhaps this was what tempted Grete to make Gregor's
situation seem even more shocking than it was so that she could do
even more for him.  Grete would probably be the only one who would
dare enter a room dominated by Gregor crawling about the bare walls
by himself.

So she refused to let her mother dissuade her.  Gregor's mother
already looked uneasy in his room, she soon stopped speaking and
helped Gregor's sister to get the chest of drawers out with what
strength she had.  The chest of drawers was something that Gregor
could do without if he had to, but the writing desk had to stay.
Hardly had the two women pushed the chest of drawers, groaning, out
of the room than Gregor poked his head out from under the couch to
see what he could do about it.  He meant to be as careful and
considerate as he could, but, unfortunately, it was his mother who
came back first while Grete in the next room had her arms round the
chest, pushing and pulling at it from side to side by herself
without, of course, moving it an inch.  His mother was not used to
the sight of Gregor, he might have made her ill, so Gregor hurried
backwards to the far end of the couch.  In his startlement, though,
he was not able to prevent the sheet at its front from moving a
little.  It was enough to attract his mother's attention.  She stood
very still, remained there a moment, and then went back out to
Grete.

Gregor kept trying to assure himself that nothing unusual was
happening, it was just a few pieces of furniture being moved after
all, but he soon had to admit that the women going to and fro, their
little calls to each other, the scraping of the furniture on the
floor, all these things made him feel as if he were being assailed
from all sides.  With his head and legs pulled in against him and
his body pressed to the floor, he was forced to admit to himself
that he could not stand all of this much longer.  They were emptying
his room out; taking away everything that was dear to him; they had
already taken out the chest containing his fretsaw and other tools;
now they threatened to remove the writing desk with its place
clearly worn into the floor, the desk where he had done his homework
as a business trainee, at high school, even while he had been at
infant school--he really could not wait any longer to see whether
the two women's intentions were good.  He had nearly forgotten they
were there anyway, as they were now too tired to say anything while
they worked and he could only hear their feet as they stepped
heavily on the floor.

So, while the women were leant against the desk in the other room
catching their breath, he sallied out, changed direction four times
not knowing what he should save first before his attention was
suddenly caught by the picture on the wall - which was already
denuded of everything else that had been on it - of the lady dressed
in copious fur.  He hurried up onto the picture and pressed himself
against its glass, it held him firmly and felt good on his hot
belly.  This picture at least, now totally covered by Gregor, would
certainly be taken away by no-one.  He turned his head to face the
door into the living room so that he could watch the women when they
came back.

They had not allowed themselves a long rest and came back quite
soon; Grete had put her arm around her mother and was nearly
carrying her.  "What shall we take now, then?", said Grete and
looked around.  Her eyes met those of Gregor on the wall.  Perhaps
only because her mother was there, she remained calm, bent her face
to her so that she would not look round and said, albeit hurriedly
and with a tremor in her voice: "Come on, let's go back in the
living room for a while?"  Gregor could see what Grete had in mind,
she wanted to take her mother somewhere safe and then chase him down
from the wall.  Well, she could certainly try it! He sat unyielding
on his picture.  He would rather jump at Grete's face.

But Grete's words had made her mother quite worried, she stepped to
one side, saw the enormous brown patch against the flowers of the
wallpaper, and before she even realised it was Gregor that she saw
screamed: "Oh God, oh God!"  Arms outstretched, she fell onto the
couch as if she had given up everything and stayed there immobile.
"Gregor!" shouted his sister, glowering at him and shaking her fist.
 That was the first word she had spoken to him directly since his
transformation.  She ran into the other room to fetch some kind of
smelling salts to bring her mother out of her faint; Gregor wanted
to help too - he could save his picture later, although he stuck
fast to the glass and had to pull himself off by force; then he,
too, ran into the next room as if he could advise his sister like in
the old days; but he had to just stand behind her doing nothing; she
was looking into various bottles, he startled her when she turned
round; a bottle fell to the ground and broke; a splinter cut
Gregor's face, some kind of caustic medicine splashed all over him;
now, without delaying any longer, Grete took hold of all the bottles
she could and ran with them in to her mother; she slammed the door
shut with her foot.  So now Gregor was shut out from his mother,
who, because of him, might be near to death; he could not open the
door if he did not want to chase his sister away, and she had to
stay with his mother; there was nothing for him to do but wait; and,
oppressed with anxiety and self-reproach, he began to crawl about,
he crawled over everything, walls, furniture, ceiling, and finally
in his confusion as the whole room began to spin around him he fell
down into the middle of the dinner table.

He lay there for a while, numb and immobile, all around him it was
quiet, maybe that was a good sign.  Then there was someone at the
door.  The maid, of course, had locked herself in her kitchen so
that Grete would have to go and answer it.  His father had arrived
home.  "What's happened?" were his first words; Grete's appearance
must have made everything clear to him.  She answered him with
subdued voice, and openly pressed her face into his chest: "Mother's
fainted, but she's better now.  Gregor got out."  "Just as I
expected", said his father, "just as I always said, but you women
wouldn't listen, would you."  It was clear to Gregor that Grete had
not said enough and that his father took it to mean that something
bad had happened, that he was responsible for some act of violence.
That meant Gregor would now have to try to calm his father, as he
did not have the time to explain things to him even if that had been
possible.  So he fled to the door of his room and pressed himself
against it so that his father, when he came in from the hall, could
see straight away that Gregor had the best intentions and would go
back into his room without delay, that it would not be necessary to
drive him back but that they had only to open the door and he would
disappear.

His father, though, was not in the mood to notice subtleties like
that; "Ah!", he shouted as he came in, sounding as if he were both
angry and glad at the same time.  Gregor drew his head back from the
door and lifted it towards his father.  He really had not imagined
his father the way he stood there now; of late, with his new habit
of crawling about, he had neglected to pay attention to what was
going on the rest of the flat the way he had done before.  He really
ought to have expected things to have changed, but still, still, was
that really his father? The same tired man as used to be laying
there entombed in his bed when Gregor came back from his business
trips, who would receive him sitting in the armchair in his
nightgown when he came back in the evenings; who was hardly even
able to stand up but, as a sign of his pleasure, would just raise
his arms and who, on the couple of times a year when they went for a
walk together on a Sunday or public holiday wrapped up tightly in
his overcoat between Gregor and his mother, would always labour his
way forward a little more slowly than them, who were already walking
slowly for his sake; who would place his stick down carefully and,
if he wanted to say something would invariably stop and gather his
companions around him.  He was standing up straight enough now;
dressed in a smart blue uniform with gold buttons, the sort worn by
the employees at the banking institute; above the high, stiff collar
of the coat his strong double-chin emerged; under the bushy
eyebrows, his piercing, dark eyes looked out fresh and alert; his
normally unkempt white hair was combed down painfully close to his
scalp.  He took his cap, with its gold monogram from, probably, some
bank, and threw it in an arc right across the room onto the sofa,
put his hands in his trouser pockets, pushing back the bottom of his
long uniform coat, and, with look of determination, walked towards
Gregor.  He probably did not even know himself what he had in mind,
but nonetheless lifted his feet unusually high.  Gregor was amazed
at the enormous size of the soles of his boots, but wasted no time
with that - he knew full well, right from the first day of his new
life, that his father thought it necessary to always be extremely
strict with him.  And so he ran up to his father, stopped when his
father stopped, scurried forwards again when he moved, even
slightly.  In this way they went round the room several times
without anything decisive happening, without even giving the
impression of a chase as everything went so slowly.  Gregor remained
all this time on the floor, largely because he feared his father
might see it as especially provoking if he fled onto the wall or
ceiling.  Whatever he did, Gregor had to admit that he certainly
would not be able to keep up this running about for long, as for
each step his father took he had to carry out countless movements.
He became noticeably short of breath, even in his earlier life his
lungs had not been very reliable.  Now, as he lurched about in his
efforts to muster all the strength he could for running he could
hardly keep his eyes open; his thoughts became too slow for him to
think of any other way of saving himself than running; he almost
forgot that the walls were there for him to use although, here, they
were concealed behind carefully carved furniture full of notches and
protrusions - then, right beside him, lightly tossed, something flew
down and rolled in front of him.  It was an apple; then another one
immediately flew at him; Gregor froze in shock; there was no longer
any point in running as his father had decided to bombard him.  He
had filled his pockets with fruit from the bowl on the sideboard and
now, without even taking the time for careful aim, threw one apple
after another.  These little, red apples rolled about on the floor,
knocking into each other as if they had electric motors.  An apple
thrown without much force glanced against Gregor's back and slid off
without doing any harm.  Another one however, immediately following
it, hit squarely and lodged in his back; Gregor wanted to drag
himself away, as if he could remove the surprising, the incredible
pain by changing his position; but he felt as if nailed to the spot
and spread himself out, all his senses in confusion.  The last thing
he saw was the door of his room being pulled open, his sister was
screaming, his mother ran out in front of her in her blouse (as his
sister had taken off some of her clothes after she had fainted to
make it easier for her to breathe), she ran to his father, her
skirts unfastened and sliding one after another to the ground,
stumbling over the skirts she pushed herself to his father, her arms
around him, uniting herself with him totally - now Gregor lost his
ability to see anything - her hands behind his father's head begging
him to spare Gregor's life.


III


No-one dared to remove the apple lodged in Gregor's flesh, so it
remained there as a visible reminder of his injury.  He had suffered
it there for more than a month, and his condition seemed serious
enough to remind even his father that Gregor, despite his current
sad and revolting form, was a family member who could not be treated
as an enemy.  On the contrary, as a family there was a duty to
swallow any revulsion for him and to be patient, just to be patient.

Because of his injuries, Gregor had lost much of his mobility -
probably permanently.  He had been reduced to the condition of an
ancient invalid and it took him long, long minutes to crawl across
his room - crawling over the ceiling was out of the question - but
this deterioration in his condition was fully (in his opinion) made
up for by the door to the living room being left open every evening.
 He got into the habit of closely watching it for one or two hours
before it was opened and then, lying in the darkness of his room
where he could not be seen from the living room, he could watch the
family in the light of the dinner table and listen to their
conversation - with everyone's permission, in a way, and thus quite
differently from before.

They no longer held the lively conversations of earlier times, of
course, the ones that Gregor always thought about with longing when
he was tired and getting into the damp bed in some small hotel room.
 All of them were usually very quiet nowadays.  Soon after dinner,
his father would go to sleep in his chair; his mother and sister
would urge each other to be quiet; his mother, bent deeply under the
lamp, would sew fancy underwear for a fashion shop; his sister, who
had taken a sales job, learned shorthand and French in the evenings
so that she might be able to get a better position later on.
Sometimes his father would wake up and say to Gregor's mother
"you're doing so much sewing again today!", as if he did not know
that he had been dozing - and then he would go back to sleep again
while mother and sister would exchange a tired grin.

With a kind of stubbornness, Gregor's father refused to take his
uniform off even at home; while his nightgown hung unused on its peg
Gregor's father would slumber where he was, fully dressed, as if
always ready to serve and expecting to hear the voice of his
superior even here.  The uniform had not been new to start with, but
as a result of this it slowly became even shabbier despite the
efforts of Gregor's mother and sister to look after it.  Gregor
would often spend the whole evening looking at all the stains on
this coat, with its gold buttons always kept polished and shiny,
while the old man in it would sleep, highly uncomfortable but
peaceful.

As soon as it struck ten, Gregor's mother would speak gently to his
father to wake him and try to persuade him to go to bed, as he
couldn't sleep properly where he was and he really had to get his
sleep if he was to be up at six to get to work.  But since he had
been in work he had become more obstinate and would always insist on
staying longer at the table, even though he regularly fell asleep
and it was then harder than ever to persuade him to exchange the
chair for his bed.  Then, however much mother and sister would
importune him with little reproaches and warnings he would keep
slowly shaking his head for a quarter of an hour with his eyes
closed and refusing to get up.  Gregor's mother would tug at his
sleeve, whisper endearments into his ear, Gregor's sister would
leave her work to help her mother, but nothing would have any effect
on him.  He would just sink deeper into his chair.  Only when the
two women took him under the arms he would abruptly open his eyes,
look at them one after the other and say: "What a life! This is what
peace I get in my old age!"  And supported by the two women he would
lift himself up carefully as if he were carrying the greatest load
himself, let the women take him to the door, send them off and carry
on by himself while Gregor's mother would throw down her needle and
his sister her pen so that they could run after his father and
continue being of help to him.

Who, in this tired and overworked family, would have had time to
give more attention to Gregor than was absolutely necessary? The
household budget became even smaller; so now the maid was dismissed;
an enormous, thick-boned charwoman with white hair that flapped
around her head came every morning and evening to do the heaviest
work; everything else was looked after by Gregor's mother on top of
the large amount of sewing work she did.  Gregor even learned,
listening to the evening conversation about what price they had
hoped for, that several items of jewellery belonging to the family
had been sold, even though both mother and sister had been very fond
of wearing them at functions and celebrations.  But the loudest
complaint was that although the flat was much too big for their
present circumstances, they could not move out of it, there was no
imaginable way of transferring Gregor to the new address.  He could
see quite well, though, that there were more reasons than
consideration for him that made it difficult for them to move, it
would have been quite easy to transport him in any suitable crate
with a few air holes in it; the main thing holding the family back
from their decision to move was much more to do with their total
despair, and the thought that they had been struck with a misfortune
unlike anything experienced by anyone else they knew or were related
to.  They carried out absolutely everything that the world expects
from poor people, Gregor's father brought bank employees their
breakfast, his mother sacrificed herself by washing clothes for
strangers, his sister ran back and forth behind her desk at the
behest of the customers, but they just did not have the strength to
do any more.  And the injury in Gregor's back began to hurt as much
as when it was new.  After they had come back from taking his father
to bed Gregor's mother and sister would now leave their work where
it was and sit close together, cheek to cheek; his mother would
point to Gregor's room and say "Close that door, Grete", and then,
when he was in the dark again, they would sit in the next room and
their tears would mingle, or they would simply sit there staring
dry-eyed at the table.

Gregor hardly slept at all, either night or day.  Sometimes he would
think of taking over the family's affairs, just like before, the
next time the door was opened; he had long forgotten about his boss
and the chief clerk, but they would appear again in his thoughts,
the salesmen and the apprentices, that stupid teaboy, two or three
friends from other businesses, one of the chambermaids from a
provincial hotel, a tender memory that appeared and disappeared
again, a cashier from a hat shop for whom his attention had been
serious but too slow, - all of them appeared to him, mixed together
with strangers and others he had forgotten, but instead of helping
him and his family they were all of them inaccessible, and he was
glad when they disappeared.  Other times he was not at all in the
mood to look after his family, he was filled with simple rage about
the lack of attention he was shown, and although he could think of
nothing he would have wanted, he made plans of how he could get into
the pantry where he could take all the things he was entitled to,
even if he was not hungry.  Gregor's sister no longer thought about
how she could please him but would hurriedly push some food or other
into his room with her foot before she rushed out to work in the
morning and at midday, and in the evening she would sweep it away
again with the broom, indifferent as to whether it had been eaten or
- more often than not - had been left totally untouched.  She still
cleared up the room in the evening, but now she could not have been
any quicker about it.  Smears of dirt were left on the walls, here
and there were little balls of dust and filth.  At first, Gregor
went into one of the worst of these places when his sister arrived
as a reproach to her, but he could have stayed there for weeks
without his sister doing anything about it; she could see the dirt
as well as he could but she had simply decided to leave him to it.
At the same time she became touchy in a way that was quite new for
her and which everyone in the family understood - cleaning up
Gregor's room was for her and her alone.  Gregor's mother did once
thoroughly clean his room, and needed to use several bucketfuls of
water to do it - although that much dampness also made Gregor ill
and he lay flat on the couch, bitter and immobile.  But his mother
was to be punished still more for what she had done, as hardly had
his sister arrived home in the evening than she noticed the change
in Gregor's room and, highly aggrieved, ran back into the living
room where, despite her mothers raised and imploring hands, she
broke into convulsive tears.  Her father, of course, was startled
out of his chair and the two parents looked on astonished and
helpless; then they, too, became agitated; Gregor's father, standing
to the right of his mother, accused her of not leaving the cleaning
of Gregor's room to his sister; from her left, Gregor's sister
screamed at her that she was never to clean Gregor's room again;
while his mother tried to draw his father, who was beside himself
with anger, into the bedroom; his sister, quaking with tears,
thumped on the table with her small fists; and Gregor hissed in
anger that no-one had even thought of closing the door to save him
the sight of this and all its noise.

Gregor's sister was exhausted from going out to work, and looking
after Gregor as she had done before was even more work for her, but
even so his mother ought certainly not to have taken her place.
Gregor, on the other hand, ought not to be neglected.  Now, though,
the charwoman was here.  This elderly widow, with a robust bone
structure that made her able to withstand the hardest of things in
her long life, wasn't really repelled by Gregor.  Just by chance one
day, rather than any real curiosity, she opened the door to Gregor's
room and found herself face to face with him.  He was taken totally
by surprise, no-one was chasing him but he began to rush to and fro
while she just stood there in amazement with her hands crossed in
front of her.  From then on she never failed to open the door
slightly every evening and morning and look briefly in on him.  At
first she would call to him as she did so with words that she
probably considered friendly, such as "come on then, you old
dung-beetle!", or "look at the old dung-beetle there!"  Gregor never
responded to being spoken to in that way, but just remained where he
was without moving as if the door had never even been opened.  If
only they had told this charwoman to clean up his room every day
instead of letting her disturb him for no reason whenever she felt
like it! One day, early in the morning while a heavy rain struck the
windowpanes, perhaps indicating that spring was coming, she began to
speak to him in that way once again.  Gregor was so resentful of it
that he started to move toward her, he was slow and infirm, but it
was like a kind of attack.  Instead of being afraid, the charwoman
just lifted up one of the chairs from near the door and stood there
with her mouth open, clearly intending not to close her mouth until
the chair in her hand had been slammed down into Gregor's back.
"Aren't you coming any closer, then?", she asked when Gregor turned
round again, and she calmly put the chair back in the corner.

Gregor had almost entirely stopped eating.  Only if he happened to
find himself next to the food that had been prepared for him he
might take some of it into his mouth to play with it, leave it there
a few hours and then, more often than not, spit it out again.  At
first he thought it was distress at the state of his room that
stopped him eating, but he had soon got used to the changes made
there.  They had got into the habit of putting things into this room
that they had no room for anywhere else, and there were now many
such things as one of the rooms in the flat had been rented out to
three gentlemen.  These earnest gentlemen - all three of them had
full beards, as Gregor learned peering through the crack in the door
one day - were painfully insistent on things' being tidy.  This
meant not only in their own room but, since they had taken a room in
this establishment, in the entire flat and especially in the
kitchen.  Unnecessary clutter was something they could not tolerate,
especially if it was dirty.  They had moreover brought most of their
own furnishings and equipment with them.  For this reason, many
things had become superfluous which, although they could not be
sold, the family did not wish to discard.  All these things found
their way into Gregor's room.  The dustbins from the kitchen found
their way in there too.  The charwoman was always in a hurry, and
anything she couldn't use for the time being she would just chuck in
there.  He, fortunately, would usually see no more than the object
and the hand that held it.  The woman most likely meant to fetch the
things back out again when she had time and the opportunity, or to
throw everything out in one go, but what actually happened was that
they were left where they landed when they had first been thrown
unless Gregor made his way through the junk and moved it somewhere
else.  At first he moved it because, with no other room free where
he could crawl about, he was forced to, but later on he came to
enjoy it although moving about in that way left him sad and tired to
death, and he would remain immobile for hours afterwards.

The gentlemen who rented the room would sometimes take their evening
meal at home in the living room that was used by everyone, and so
the door to this room was often kept closed in the evening.  But
Gregor found it easy to give up having the door open, he had, after
all, often failed to make use of it when it was open and, without
the family having noticed it, lain in his room in its darkest
corner.  One time, though, the charwoman left the door to the living
room slightly open, and it remained open when the gentlemen who
rented the room came in in the evening and the light was put on.
They sat up at the table where, formerly, Gregor had taken his meals
with his father and mother, they unfolded the serviettes and picked
up their knives and forks.  Gregor's mother immediately appeared in
the doorway with a dish of meat and soon behind her came his sister
with a dish piled high with potatoes.  The food was steaming, and
filled the room with its smell.  The gentlemen bent over the dishes
set in front of them as if they wanted to test the food before
eating it, and the gentleman in the middle, who seemed to count as
an authority for the other two, did indeed cut off a piece of meat
while it was still in its dish, clearly wishing to establish whether
it was sufficiently cooked or whether it should be sent back to the
kitchen.  It was to his satisfaction, and Gregor's mother and
sister, who had been looking on anxiously, began to breathe again
and smiled.

The family themselves ate in the kitchen.  Nonetheless, Gregor's
father came into the living room before he went into the kitchen,
bowed once with his cap in his hand and did his round of the table.
The gentlemen stood as one, and mumbled something into their beards.
 Then, once they were alone, they ate in near perfect silence.  It
seemed remarkable to Gregor that above all the various noises of
eating their chewing teeth could still be heard, as if they had
wanted to show Gregor that you need teeth in order to eat and it was
not possible to perform anything with jaws that are toothless
however nice they might be.  "I'd like to eat something", said
Gregor anxiously, "but not anything like they're eating.  They do
feed themselves.  And here I am, dying!"

Throughout all this time, Gregor could not remember having heard the
violin being played, but this evening it began to be heard from the
kitchen.  The three gentlemen had already finished their meal, the
one in the middle had produced a newspaper, given a page to each of
the others, and now they leant back in their chairs reading them and
smoking.  When the violin began playing they became attentive, stood
up and went on tip-toe over to the door of the hallway where they
stood pressed against each other.  Someone must have heard them in
the kitchen, as Gregor's father called out: "Is the playing perhaps
unpleasant for the gentlemen? We can stop it straight away."  "On
the contrary", said the middle gentleman, "would the young lady not
like to come in and play for us here in the room, where it is, after
all, much more cosy and comfortable?"  "Oh yes, we'd love to",
called back Gregor's father as if he had been the violin player
himself.  The gentlemen stepped back into the room and waited.
Gregor's father soon appeared with the music stand, his mother with
the music and his sister with the violin.  She calmly prepared
everything for her to begin playing; his parents, who had never
rented a room out before and therefore showed an exaggerated
courtesy towards the three gentlemen, did not even dare to sit on
their own chairs; his father leant against the door with his right
hand pushed in between two buttons on his uniform coat; his mother,
though, was offered a seat by one of the gentlemen and sat - leaving
the chair where the gentleman happened to have placed it - out of
the way in a corner.

His sister began to play; father and mother paid close attention,
one on each side, to the movements of her hands.  Drawn in by the
playing, Gregor had dared to come forward a little and already had
his head in the living room.  Before, he had taken great pride in
how considerate he was but now it hardly occurred to him that he had
become so thoughtless about the others.  What's more, there was now
all the more reason to keep himself hidden as he was covered in the
dust that lay everywhere in his room and flew up at the slightest
movement; he carried threads, hairs, and remains of food about on
his back and sides; he was much too indifferent to everything now to
lay on his back and wipe himself on the carpet like he had used to
do several times a day.  And despite this condition, he was not too
shy to move forward a little onto the immaculate floor of the living
room.

No-one noticed him, though.  The family was totally preoccupied with
the violin playing; at first, the three gentlemen had put their
hands in their pockets and come up far too close behind the music
stand to look at all the notes being played, and they must have
disturbed Gregor's sister, but soon, in contrast with the family,
they  withdrew back to the window with their heads sunk and talking
to each other at half volume, and they stayed by the window while
Gregor's father observed them anxiously.  It really now seemed very
obvious that they had expected to hear some beautiful or
entertaining violin playing but had been disappointed, that they had
had enough of the whole performance and it was only now out of
politeness that they allowed their peace to be disturbed.  It was
especially unnerving, the way they all blew the smoke from their
cigarettes upwards from their mouth and noses.  Yet Gregor's sister
was playing so beautifully.  Her face was leant to one side,
following the lines of music with a careful and melancholy
expression.  Gregor crawled a little further forward, keeping his
head close to the ground so that he could meet her eyes if the
chance came.  Was he an animal if music could captivate him so? It
seemed to him that he was being shown the way to the unknown
nourishment he had been yearning for.  He was determined to make his
way forward to his sister and tug at her skirt to show her she might
come into his room with her violin, as no-one appreciated her
playing here as much as he would.  He never wanted to let her out of
his room, not while he lived, anyway; his shocking appearance
should, for once, be of some use to him; he wanted to be at every
door of his room at once to hiss and spit at the attackers; his
sister should not be forced to stay with him, though, but stay of
her own free will; she would sit beside him on the couch with her
ear bent down to him while he told her how he had always intended to
send her to the conservatory, how he would have told everyone about
it last Christmas - had Christmas really come and gone already? - if
this misfortune hadn't got in the way, and refuse to let anyone
dissuade him from it.  On hearing all this, his sister would break
out in tears of emotion, and Gregor would climb up to her shoulder
and kiss her neck, which, since she had been going out to work, she
had kept free without any necklace or collar.

"Mr. Samsa!", shouted the middle gentleman to Gregor's father,
pointing, without wasting any more words, with his forefinger at
Gregor as he slowly moved forward.  The violin went silent, the
middle of the three gentlemen first smiled at his two friends,
shaking his head, and then looked back at Gregor.  His father seemed
to think it more important to calm the three gentlemen before
driving Gregor out, even though they were not at all upset and
seemed to think Gregor was more entertaining than the violin playing
had been.  He rushed up to them with his arms spread out and
attempted to drive them back into their room at the same time as
trying to block their view of Gregor with his body.  Now they did
become a little annoyed, and it was not clear whether it was his
father's behaviour that annoyed them or the dawning realisation that
they had had a neighbour like Gregor in the next room without
knowing it.  They asked Gregor's father for explanations, raised
their arms like he had, tugged excitedly at their beards and moved
back towards their room only very slowly.  Meanwhile Gregor's sister
had overcome the despair she had fallen into when her playing was
suddenly interrupted.  She had let her hands drop and let violin and
bow hang limply for a while but continued to look at the music as if
still playing, but then she suddenly pulled herself together, lay
the instrument on her mother's lap who still sat laboriously
struggling for breath where she was, and ran into the next room
which, under pressure from her father, the three gentlemen were more
quickly moving toward.  Under his sister's experienced hand, the
pillows and covers on the beds flew up and were put into order and
she had already finished making the beds and slipped out again
before the three gentlemen had reached the room.  Gregor's father
seemed so obsessed with what he was doing that he forgot all the
respect he owed to his tenants.  He urged them and pressed them
until, when he was already at the door of the room, the middle of
the three gentlemen shouted like thunder and stamped his foot and
thereby brought Gregor's father to a halt.  "I declare here and
now", he said, raising his hand and glancing at Gregor's mother and
sister to gain their attention too, "that with regard to the
repugnant conditions that prevail in this flat and with this family"
- here he looked briefly but decisively at the floor - "I give
immediate notice on my room.  For the days that I have been living
here I will, of course, pay nothing at all, on the contrary I will
consider whether to proceed with some kind of action for damages
from you, and believe me it would be very easy to set out the
grounds for such an action."  He was silent and looked straight
ahead as if waiting for something.  And indeed, his two friends
joined in with the words: "And we also give immediate notice."  With
that, he took hold of the door handle and slammed the door.

Gregor's father staggered back to his seat, feeling his way with his
hands, and fell into it; it looked as if he was stretching himself
out for his usual evening nap but from the uncontrolled way his head
kept nodding it could be seen that he was not sleeping at all.
Throughout all this, Gregor had lain still where the three gentlemen
had first seen him.  His disappointment at the failure of his plan,
and perhaps also because he was weak from hunger, made it impossible
for him to move.  He was sure that everyone would turn on him any
moment, and he waited.  He was not even startled out of this state
when the violin on his mother's lap fell from her trembling fingers
and landed loudly on the floor.

"Father, Mother", said his sister, hitting the table with her hand
as introduction, "we can't carry on like this.  Maybe you can't see
it, but I can.  I don't want to call this monster my brother, all I
can say is: we have to try and get rid of it.  We've done all that's
humanly possible to look after it and be patient, I don't think
anyone could accuse us of doing anything wrong."

"She's absolutely right", said Gregor's father to himself.  His
mother, who still had not had time to catch her breath, began to
cough dully, her hand held out in front of her and a deranged
expression in her eyes.

Gregor's sister rushed to his mother and put her hand on her
forehead.  Her words seemed to give Gregor's father some more
definite ideas.  He sat upright, played with his uniform cap between
the plates left by the three gentlemen after their meal, and
occasionally looked down at Gregor as he lay there immobile.

"We have to try and get rid of it", said Gregor's sister, now
speaking only to her father, as her mother was too occupied with
coughing to listen, "it'll be the death of both of you, I can see it
coming.  We can't all work as hard as we have to and then come home
to be tortured like this, we can't endure it.  I can't endure it any
more."  And she broke out so heavily in tears that they flowed down
the face of her mother, and she wiped them away with mechanical hand
movements.

"My child", said her father with sympathy and obvious understanding,
"what are we to do?"

His sister just shrugged her shoulders as a sign of the helplessness
and tears that had taken hold of her, displacing her earlier
certainty.

"If he could just understand us", said his father almost as a
question; his sister shook her hand vigorously through her tears as
a sign that of that there was no question.

"If he could just understand us", repeated Gregor's father, closing
his eyes in acceptance of his sister's certainty that that was quite
impossible, "then perhaps we could come to some kind of arrangement
with him.  But as it is ..."

"It's got to go", shouted his sister, "that's the only way, Father.
You've got to get rid of the idea that that's Gregor.  We've only
harmed ourselves by believing it for so long.  How can that be
Gregor? If it were Gregor he would have seen long ago that it's not
possible for human beings to live with an animal like that and he
would have gone of his own free will.  We wouldn't have a brother
any more, then, but we could carry on with our lives and remember
him with respect.  As it is this animal is persecuting us, it's
driven out our tenants, it obviously wants to take over the whole
flat and force us to sleep on the streets.  Father, look, just
look", she suddenly screamed, "he's starting again!"   In her alarm,
which was totally beyond Gregor's comprehension, his sister even
abandoned his mother as she pushed herself vigorously out of her
chair as if more willing to sacrifice her own mother than stay
anywhere near Gregor.  She rushed over to behind her father, who had
become excited merely because she was and stood up half raising his
hands in front of Gregor's sister as if to protect her.

But Gregor had had no intention of frightening anyone, least of all
his sister.  All he had done was begin to turn round so that he
could go back into his room, although that was in itself quite
startling as his pain-wracked condition meant that turning round
required a great deal of effort and he was using his head to help
himself do it, repeatedly raising it and striking it against the
floor.  He stopped and looked round.  They seemed to have realised
his good intention and had only been alarmed briefly.  Now they all
looked at him in unhappy silence.  His mother lay in her chair with
her legs stretched out and pressed against each other, her eyes
nearly closed with exhaustion; his sister sat next to his father
with her arms around his neck.

"Maybe now they'll let me turn round", thought Gregor and went back
to work.  He could not help panting loudly with the effort and had
sometimes to stop and take a rest.  No-one was making him rush any
more, everything was left up to him.  As soon as he had finally
finished turning round he began to move straight ahead.  He was
amazed at the great distance that separated him from his room, and
could not understand how he had covered that distance in his weak
state a little while before and almost without noticing it.  He
concentrated on crawling as fast as he could and hardly noticed that
there was not a word, not any cry, from his family to distract him.
He did not turn his head until he had reached the doorway.  He did
not turn it all the way round as he felt his neck becoming stiff,
but it was nonetheless enough to see that nothing behind him had
changed, only his sister had stood up.  With his last glance he saw
that his mother had now fallen completely asleep.

He was hardly inside his room before the door was hurriedly shut,
bolted and locked.  The sudden noise behind Gregor so startled him
that his little legs collapsed under him.  It was his sister who had
been in so much of a rush.  She had been standing there waiting and
sprung forward lightly, Gregor had not heard her coming at all, and
as she turned the key in the lock she said loudly to her parents "At
last!".

"What now, then?", Gregor asked himself as he looked round in the
darkness.  He soon made the discovery that he could no longer move
at all.  This was no surprise to him, it seemed rather that being
able to actually move around on those spindly little legs until then
was unnatural.  He also felt relatively comfortable.  It is true
that his entire body was aching, but the pain seemed to be slowly
getting weaker and weaker and would finally disappear altogether.
He could already hardly feel the decayed apple in his back or the
inflamed area around it, which was entirely covered in white dust.
He thought back of his family with emotion and love.  If it was
possible, he felt that he must go away even more strongly than his
sister.  He remained in this state of empty and peaceful rumination
until he heard the clock tower strike three in the morning.  He
watched as it slowly began to get light everywhere outside the
window too.  Then, without his willing it, his head sank down
completely, and his last breath flowed weakly from his nostrils.

When the cleaner came in early in the morning - they'd often asked
her not to keep slamming the doors but with her strength and in her
hurry she still did, so that everyone in the flat knew when she'd
arrived and from then on it was impossible to sleep in peace - she
made her usual brief look in on Gregor and at first found nothing
special.  She thought he was laying there so still on purpose,
playing the martyr; she attributed all possible understanding to
him.  She happened to be holding the long broom in her hand, so she
tried to tickle Gregor with it from the doorway.  When she had no
success with that she tried to make a nuisance of herself and poked
at him a little, and only when she found she could shove him across
the floor with no resistance at all did she start to pay attention.
She soon realised what had really happened, opened her eyes wide,
whistled to herself, but did not waste time to yank open the bedroom
doors and shout loudly into the darkness of the bedrooms: "Come and
'ave a look at this, it's dead, just lying there, stone dead!"

Mr. and  Mrs. Samsa sat upright there in their marriage bed and had
to make an effort to get over the shock caused by the cleaner before
they could grasp what she was saying.  But then, each from his own
side, they hurried out of bed.  Mr. Samsa threw the blanket over his
shoulders,  Mrs. Samsa just came out in her nightdress; and that is
how they went into Gregor's room.  On the way they opened the door
to the living room where Grete had been sleeping since the three
gentlemen had moved in; she was fully dressed as if she had never
been asleep, and the paleness of her face seemed to confirm this.
"Dead?", asked  Mrs. Samsa, looking at the charwoman enquiringly,
even though she could have checked for herself and could have known
it even without checking.  "That's what I said",  replied the
cleaner, and to prove it she gave Gregor's body another shove with
the broom, sending it sideways across the floor.  Mrs. Samsa made a
movement as if she wanted to hold back the broom, but did not
complete it.  "Now then", said  Mr. Samsa, "let's give thanks to God
for that". He crossed himself, and the three women followed his
example.  Grete, who had not taken her eyes from the corpse, said:
"Just look how thin he was.  He didn't eat anything for so long.
The food came out again just the same as when it went in". Gregor's
body was indeed completely dried up and flat, they had not seen it
until then, but now he was not lifted up on his little legs, nor did
he do anything to make them look away.

"Grete, come with us in here for a little while", said  Mrs. Samsa
with a pained smile, and Grete followed her parents into the bedroom
but not without looking back at the body.  The cleaner shut the door
and opened the window wide.  Although it was still early in the
morning the fresh air had something of warmth mixed in with it.  It
was already the end of March, after all.

The three gentlemen stepped out of their room and looked round in
amazement for their breakfasts;  they had been forgotten about.
"Where is our breakfast?", the middle gentleman asked the cleaner
irritably.  She just put her finger on her lips and made a quick and
silent sign to the men that they might like to come into Gregor's
room.  They did so, and stood around Gregor's corpse with their
hands in the pockets of their well-worn coats. It was now quite
light in the room.

Then the door of the bedroom opened and  Mr. Samsa appeared in his
uniform with his wife on one arm and his daughter on the other.  All
of them had been crying a little; Grete now and then pressed her
face against her father's arm.

"Leave my home.  Now!", said  Mr. Samsa, indicating the door and
without letting the women from him.  "What do you mean?", asked the
middle of the three gentlemen somewhat disconcerted, and he smiled
sweetly.  The other two held their hands behind their backs and
continually rubbed them together in gleeful anticipation of a loud
quarrel which could only end in their favour.  "I mean just what I
said", answered  Mr. Samsa, and, with his two companions, went in a
straight line towards the man.  At first, he stood there still,
looking at the ground as if the contents of his head were
rearranging themselves into new positions.  "Alright, we'll go
then", he said, and looked up at  Mr. Samsa as if he had been
suddenly overcome with humility and wanted permission again from
Mr. Samsa for his decision.  Mr. Samsa merely opened his eyes wide
and briefly nodded to him several times.  At that, and without
delay, the man actually did take long strides into the front
hallway; his two friends had stopped rubbing their hands some time
before and had been listening to what was being said.  Now they
jumped off after their friend as if taken with a sudden fear that
Mr. Samsa might go into the hallway in front of them and break the
connection with their leader.  Once there, all three took their hats
from the stand, took their sticks from the holder, bowed without a
word and left the premises.  Mr. Samsa and the two women followed
them out onto the landing; but they had had no reason to mistrust
the men's intentions and as they leaned over the landing they saw how
the three gentlemen made slow but steady progress down the many
steps.  As they turned the corner on each floor they disappeared and
would reappear a few moments later; the further down they went, the
more that the Samsa family lost interest in them; when a butcher's
boy, proud of posture with his tray on his head, passed them on his
way up and came nearer than they were,  Mr. Samsa and the women came
away from the landing and went, as if relieved, back into the flat.

They decided the best way to make use of that day was for relaxation
and to go for a walk; not only had they earned a break from work but
they were in serious need of it.  So they sat at the table and wrote
three letters of excusal,  Mr. Samsa to his employers,  Mrs. Samsa
to her contractor and Grete to her principal.  The cleaner came in
while they were writing to tell them she was going, she'd finished
her work for that morning.  The three of them at first just nodded
without looking up from what they were writing, and it was only when
the cleaner still did not seem to want to leave that they looked up
in irritation.  "Well?", asked  Mr. Samsa.  The charwoman stood in
the doorway with a smile on her face as if she had some tremendous
good news to report, but would only do it if she was clearly asked
to.  The almost vertical little ostrich feather on her hat, which
had been a source of irritation to  Mr. Samsa all the time she had
been working for them, swayed gently in all directions.  "What is it
you want then?", asked  Mrs. Samsa, whom the cleaner had the most
respect for.  "Yes", she answered, and broke into a friendly laugh
that made her unable to speak straight away, "well then, that thing
in there, you needn't worry about how you're going to get rid of it.
 That's all been sorted out."   Mrs. Samsa and Grete bent down over
their letters as if intent on continuing with what they were
writing;  Mr. Samsa saw that the cleaner wanted to start describing
everything in detail but, with outstretched hand, he made it quite
clear that she was not to.  So, as she was prevented from telling
them all about it, she suddenly remembered what a hurry she was in
and, clearly peeved, called out "Cheerio then, everyone", turned
round sharply and left, slamming the door terribly as she went.

"Tonight she gets sacked", said  Mr. Samsa, but he received no reply
from either his wife or his daughter as the charwoman seemed to have
destroyed the peace they had only just gained.  They got up and went
over to the window where they remained with their arms around each
other.  Mr. Samsa twisted round in his chair to look at them and sat
there watching for a while.  Then he called out: "Come here, then.
Let's forget about all that old stuff, shall we.  Come and give me a
bit of attention". The two women immediately did as he said,
hurrying over to him where they kissed him and hugged him and then
they quickly finished their letters.

After that, the three of them left the flat together, which was
something they had not done for months, and took the tram out to the
open country outside the town.  They had the tram, filled with warm
sunshine, all to themselves.  Leant back comfortably on their seats,
they discussed their prospects and found that on closer examination
they were not at all bad - until then they had never asked each
other about their work but all three had jobs which were very good
and held particularly good promise for the future.  The greatest
improvement for the time being, of course, would be achieved quite
easily by moving house; what they needed now was a flat that was
smaller and cheaper than the current one which had been chosen by
Gregor, one that was in a better location and, most of all, more
practical.  All the time, Grete was becoming livelier.  With all the
worry they had been having of late her cheeks had become pale, but,
while they were talking,  Mr. and  Mrs. Samsa were struck, almost
simultaneously, with the thought of how their daughter was
blossoming into a well built and beautiful young lady.  They became
quieter.  Just from each other's glance and almost without knowing
it they agreed that it would soon be time to find a good man for
her.  And, as if in confirmation of their new dreams and good
intentions, as soon as they reached their destination Grete was the
first to get up and stretch out her young body.
 

Sample text: 11
THE BECKONING FAIR ONE


I

The three or four "To Let" boards had stood within the low paling as
long as the inhabitants of the little triangular "Square" could remember,
and if they had ever been vertical it was a very long time ago. They now
overhung the palings each at its own angle, and resembled nothing so
much as a row of wooden choppers, ever in the act of falling upon some
passer-by, yet never cutting off a tenant for the old house from the
stream of his fellows. Not that there was ever any great "stream" through
the square; the stream passed a furlong and more away, beyond the
intricacy of tenements and alleys and byways that had sprung up since the
old house had been built, hemming it in completely; and probably the
house itself was only suffered to stand pending the falling-in of a lease
or two, when doubtless a clearance would be made of the whole
neighbourhood.

It was of bloomy old red brick, and built into its walls were the crowns
and clasped hands and other insignia of insurance companies long since
defunct. The children of the secluded square had swung upon the low gate
at the end of the entrance-alley until little more than the solid top bar
of it remained, and the alley itself ran past boarded basement windows on
which tramps had chalked their cryptic marks. The path was washed and
worn uneven by the spilling of water from the eaves of the encroaching
next house, and cats and dogs had made the approach their own. The
chances of a tenant did not seem such as to warrant the keeping of the
"To Let" boards in a state of legibility and repair, and as a matter of
fact they were not so kept.

For six months Oleron had passed the old place twice a day or oftener, on
his way from his lodgings to the room, ten minutes' walk away, he had
taken to work in; and for six months no hatchet-like notice-board had
fallen across his path. This might have been due to the fact that he
usually took the other side of the square. But he chanced one morning to
take the side that ran past the broken gate and the rain-worn entrance
alley, and to pause before one of the inclined boards. The board bore,
besides the agent's name, the announcement, written apparently about the
time of Oleron's own early youth, that the key was to be had at Number
Six.

Now Oleron was already paying, for his separate bedroom and workroom,
more than an author who, without private means, habitually disregards his
public, can afford; and he was paying in addition a small rent for the
storage of the greater part of his grandmother's furniture. Moreover, it
invariably happened that the book he wished to read in bed was at his
working-quarters half a mile and more away, while the note or letter he
had sudden need of during the day was as likely as not to be in the
pocket of another coat hanging behind his bedroom door. And there were
other inconveniences in having a divided domicile. Therefore Oleron,
brought suddenly up by the hatchet-like notice-board, looked first down
through some scanty privet-bushes at the boarded basement windows, then
up at the blank and grimy windows of the first floor, and so up to the
second floor and the flat stone coping of the leads. He stood for a
minute thumbing his lean and shaven jaw; then, with another glance at the
board, he walked slowly across the square to Number Six.

He knocked, and waited for two or three minutes, but, although the door
stood open, received no answer. He was knocking again when a long-nosed
man in shirt-sleeves appeared.

"I was arsking a blessing on our food," he said in severe explanation.

Oleron asked if he might have the key of the old house; and the
long-nosed man withdrew again.

Oleron waited for another five minutes on the step; then the man,
appearing again and masticating some of the food of which he had spoken,
announced that the key was lost.

"But you won't want it," he said. "The entrance door isn't closed, and a
push'll open any of the others. I'm a agent for it, if you're thinking of
taking it--"

Oleron recrossed the square, descended the two steps at the broken gate,
passed along the alley, and turned in at the old wide doorway. To the
right, immediately within the door, steps descended to the roomy cellars,
and the staircase before him had a carved rail, and was broad and
handsome and filthy. Oleron ascended it, avoiding contact with the rail
and wall, and stopped at the first landing. A door facing him had been
boarded up, but he pushed at that on his right hand, and an insecure bolt
or staple yielded. He entered the empty first floor.

He spent a quarter of an hour in the place, and then came out again.
Without mounting higher, he descended and recrossed the square to the
house of the man who had lost the key.

"Can you tell me how much the rent is?" he asked.

The man mentioned a figure, the comparative lowness of which seemed
accounted for by the character of the neighbourhood and the abominable
state of unrepair of the place.

"Would it be possible to rent a single floor?"

The long-nosed man did not know; they might....

"Who are they?"

The man gave Oleron the name of a firm of lawyers in Lincoln's Inn.

"You might mention my name--Barrett," he added.

Pressure of work prevented Oleron from going down to Lincoln's Inn that
afternoon, but he went on the morrow, and was instantly offered the
whole house as a purchase for fifty pounds down, the remainder of the
purchase-money to remain on mortgage. It took him half an hour to
disabuse the lawyer's mind of the idea that he wished anything more of
the place than to rent a single floor of it. This made certain hums and
haws of a difference, and the lawyer was by no means certain that it lay
within his power to do as Oleron suggested; but it was finally extracted
from him that, provided the notice-boards were allowed to remain up, and
that, provided it was agreed that in the event of the whole house
letting, the arrangement should terminate automatically without further
notice, something might be done. That the old place should suddenly let
over his head seemed to Oleron the slightest of risks to take, and he
promised a decision within a week. On the morrow he visited the house
again, went through it from top to bottom, and then went home to his
lodgings to take a bath.

He was immensely taken with that portion of the house he had already
determined should be his own. Scraped clean and repainted, and with
that old furniture of Oleron's grandmother's, it ought to be entirely
charming. He went to the storage warehouse to refresh his memory of his
half-forgotten belongings, and to take measurements; and thence he went
to a decorator's. He was very busy with his regular work, and could have
wished that the notice-board had caught his attention either a few months
earlier or else later in the year; but the quickest way would be to
suspend work entirely until after his removal....

A fortnight later his first floor was painted throughout in a tender,
elder-flower white, the paint was dry, and Oleron was in the middle of
his installation. He was animated, delighted; and he rubbed his hands as
he polished and made disposals of his grandmother's effects--the tall
lattice-paned china cupboard with its Derby and Mason and Spode, the
large folding Sheraton table, the long, low bookshelves (he had had two
of them "copied"), the chairs, the Sheffield candlesticks, the riveted
rose-bowls. These things he set against his newly painted elder-white
walls--walls of wood panelled in the happiest proportions, and moulded
and coffered to the low-seated window-recesses in a mood of gaiety and
rest that the builders of rooms no longer know. The ceilings were lofty,
and faintly painted with an old pattern of stars; even the tapering
mouldings of his iron fireplace were as delicately designed as jewellery;
and Oleron walked about rubbing his hands, frequently stopping for the
mere pleasure of the glimpses from white room to white room....

"Charming, charming!" he said to himself. "I wonder what Elsie Bengough
will think of this!"

He bought a bolt and a Yale lock for his door, and shut off his quarters
from the rest of the house. If he now wanted to read in bed, his book
could be had for stepping into the next room. All the time, he thought
how exceedingly lucky he was to get the place. He put up a hat-rack in
the little square hall, and hung up his hats and caps and coats; and
passers through the small triangular square late at night, looking up
over the little serried row of wooden "To Let" hatchets, could see the
light within Oleron's red blinds, or else the sudden darkening of one
blind and the illumination of another, as Oleron, candlestick in hand,
passed from room to room, making final settlings of his furniture, or
preparing to resume the work that his removal had interrupted.


II

As far as the chief business of his life--his writing--was concerned,
Paul Oleron treated the world a good deal better than he was treated by
it; but he seldom took the trouble to strike a balance, or to compute how
far, at forty-four years of age, he was behind his points on the
handicap. To have done so wouldn't have altered matters, and it might
have depressed Oleron. He had chosen his path, and was committed to it
beyond possibility of withdrawal. Perhaps he had chosen it in the days
when he had been easily swayed by something a little disinterested, a
little generous, a little noble; and had he ever thought of questioning
himself he would still have held to it that a life without nobility and
generosity and disinterestedness was no life for him. Only quite
recently, and rarely, had he even vaguely suspected that there was more
in it than this; but it was no good anticipating the day when, he
supposed, he would reach that maximum point of his powers beyond which he
must inevitably decline, and be left face to face with the question
whether it would not have profited him better to have ruled his life
by less exigent ideals.

In the meantime, his removal into the old house with the insurance marks
built into its brick merely interrupted _Romilly Bishop_ at the fifteenth
chapter.

As this tall man with the lean, ascetic face moved about his new abode,
arranging, changing, altering, hardly yet into his working-stride again,
he gave the impression of almost spinster-like precision and nicety. For
twenty years past, in a score of lodgings, garrets, flats, and rooms
furnished and unfurnished, he had been accustomed to do many things for
himself, and he had discovered that it saves time and temper to be
methodical. He had arranged with the wife of the long-nosed Barrett, a
stout Welsh woman with a falsetto voice, the Merionethshire accent of
which long residence in London had not perceptibly modified, to come
across the square each morning to prepare his breakfast, and also to
"turn the place out" on Saturday mornings; and for the rest, he even
welcomed a little housework as a relaxation from the strain of writing.

His kitchen, together with the adjoining strip of an apartment into
which a modern bath had been fitted, overlooked the alley at the side of
the house; and at one end of it was a large closet with a door, and a
square sliding hatch in the upper part of the door. This had been a
powder-closet, and through the hatch the elaborately dressed head had
been thrust to receive the click and puff of the powder-pistol. Oleron
puzzled a little over this closet; then, as its use occurred to him, he
smiled faintly, a little moved, he knew not by what.... He would have to
put it to a very different purpose from its original one; it would
probably have to serve as his larder.... It was in this closet that
he made a discovery. The back of it was shelved, and, rummaging on an
upper shelf that ran deeply into the wall, Oleron found a couple of
mushroom-shaped old wooden wig-stands. He did not know how they had come
to be there. Doubtless the painters had turned them up somewhere or
other, and had put them there. But his five rooms, as a whole, were
short of cupboard and closet-room; and it was only by the exercise of
some ingenuity that he was able to find places for the bestowal of his
household linen, his boxes, and his seldom-used but not-to-be-destroyed
accumulations of papers.

It was in early spring that Oleron entered on his tenancy, and he was
anxious to have _Romilly_ ready for publication in the coming autumn.
Nevertheless, he did not intend to force its production. Should it demand
longer in the doing, so much the worse; he realised its importance, its
crucial importance, in his artistic development, and it must have its own
length and time. In the workroom he had recently left he had been making
excellent progress; _Romilly_ had begun, as the saying is, to speak and
act of herself; and he did not doubt she would continue to do so the
moment the distraction of his removal was over. This distraction was
almost over; he told himself it was time he pulled himself together
again; and on a March morning he went out, returned again with two great
bunches of yellow daffodils, placed one bunch on his mantelpiece between
the Sheffield sticks and the other on the table before him, and took out
the half-completed manuscript of _Romilly Bishop_.

But before beginning work he went to a small rosewood cabinet and took
from a drawer his cheque-book and pass-book. He totted them up, and his
monk-like face grew thoughtful. His installation had cost him more than
he had intended it should, and his balance was rather less than fifty
pounds, with no immediate prospect of more.

"Hm! I'd forgotten rugs and chintz curtains and so forth mounted up so,"
said Oleron. "But it would have been a pity to spoil the place for the
want of ten pounds or so.... Well, _Romilly_ simply _must_ be out for the
autumn, that's all. So here goes--"

He drew his papers towards him.

But he worked badly; or, rather, he did not work at all. The square
outside had its own noises, frequent and new, and Oleron could only hope
that he would speedily become accustomed to these. First came hawkers,
with their carts and cries; at midday the children, returning from
school, trooped into the square and swung on Oleron's gate; and when the
children had departed again for afternoon school, an itinerant musician
with a mandolin posted himself beneath Oleron's window and began to
strum. This was a not unpleasant distraction, and Oleron, pushing up his
window, threw the man a penny. Then he returned to his table again....

But it was no good. He came to himself, at long intervals, to find that
he had been looking about his room and wondering how it had formerly
been furnished--whether a settee in buttercup or petunia satin had stood
under the farther window, whether from the centre moulding of the light
lofty ceiling had depended a glimmering crystal chandelier, or where the
tambour-frame or the picquet-table had stood.... No, it was no good; he
had far better be frankly doing nothing than getting fruitlessly tired;
and he decided that he would take a walk, but, chancing to sit down for a
moment, dozed in his chair instead.

"This won't do," he yawned when he awoke at half-past four in the
afternoon; "I must do better than this to-morrow--"

And he felt so deliciously lazy that for some minutes he even
contemplated the breach of an appointment he had for the evening.

The next morning he sat down to work without even permitting himself to
answer one of his three letters--two of them tradesmen's accounts, the
third a note from Miss Bengough, forwarded from his old address. It was a
jolly day of white and blue, with a gay noisy wind and a subtle turn in
the colour of growing things; and over and over again, once or twice a
minute, his room became suddenly light and then subdued again, as the
shining white clouds rolled north-eastwards over the square. The soft
fitful illumination was reflected in the polished surface of the table
and even in the footworn old floor; and the morning noises had begun
again.

Oleron made a pattern of dots on the paper before him, and then broke off
to move the jar of daffodils exactly opposite the centre of a creamy
panel. Then he wrote a sentence that ran continuously for a couple of
lines, after which it broke on into notes and jottings. For a time he
succeeded in persuading himself that in making these memoranda he was
really working; then he rose and began to pace his room. As he did so, he
was struck by an idea. It was that the place might possibly be a little
better for more positive colour. It was, perhaps, a thought _too_
pale--mild and sweet as a kind old face, but a little devitalised, even
wan.... Yes, decidedly it would bear a robuster note--more and richer
flowers, and possibly some warm and gay stuff for cushions for the
window-seats....

"Of course, I really can't afford it," he muttered, as he went for a
two-foot and began to measure the width of the window recesses....

In stooping to measure a recess, his attitude suddenly changed to one of
interest and attention. Presently he rose again, rubbing his hands with
gentle glee.

"Oho, oho!" he said. "These look to me very much like window-boxes,
nailed up. We must look into this! Yes, those are boxes, or
I'm ... oho, this is an adventure!"

On that wall of his sitting-room there were two windows (the third was in
another corner), and, beyond the open bedroom door, on the same wall, was
another. The seats of all had been painted, repainted, and painted again;
and Oleron's investigating finger had barely detected the old nailheads
beneath the paint. Under the ledge over which he stooped an old keyhole
also had been puttied up. Oleron took out his penknife.

He worked carefully for five minutes, and then went into the kitchen for
a hammer and chisel. Driving the chisel cautiously under the seat, he
started the whole lid slightly. Again using the penknife, he cut along
the hinged edge and outward along the ends; and then he fetched a
wedge and a wooden mallet.

"Now for our little mystery--" he said.

The sound of the mallet on the wedge seemed, in that sweet and pale
apartment, somehow a little brutal--nay, even shocking. The panelling
rang and rattled and vibrated to the blows like a sounding-board. The
whole house seemed to echo; from the roomy cellarage to the garrets
above a flock of echoes seemed to awake; and the sound got a little on
Oleron's nerves. All at once he paused, fetched a duster, and muffled the
mallet.... When the edge was sufficiently raised he put his fingers under
it and lifted. The paint flaked and starred a little; the rusty old
nails squeaked and grunted; and the lid came up, laying open the box
beneath. Oleron looked into it. Save for a couple of inches of scurf and
mould and old cobwebs it was empty.

"No treasure there," said Oleron, a little amused that he should have
fancied there might have been. "_Romilly_ will still have to be out by
the autumn. Let's have a look at the others."

He turned to the second window.

The raising of the two remaining seats occupied him until well into the
afternoon. That of the bedroom, like the first, was empty; but from the
second seat of his sitting-room he drew out something yielding and folded
and furred over an inch thick with dust. He carried the object into the
kitchen, and having swept it over a bucket, took a duster to it.

It was some sort of a large bag, of an ancient frieze-like material, and
when unfolded it occupied the greater part of the small kitchen floor. In
shape it was an irregular, a very irregular, triangle, and it had a
couple of wide flaps, with the remains of straps and buckles. The patch
that had been uppermost in the folding was of a faded yellowish brown;
but the rest of it was of shades of crimson that varied according to the
exposure of the parts of it.

"Now whatever can that have been?" Oleron mused as he stood surveying
it.... "I give it up. Whatever it is, it's settled my work for today,
I'm afraid--"

He folded the object up carelessly and thrust it into a corner of the
kitchen; then, taking pans and brushes and an old knife, he returned to
the sitting-room and began to scrape and to wash and to line with paper
his newly discovered receptacles. When he had finished, he put his spare
boots and books and papers into them; and he closed the lids again,
amused with his little adventure, but also a little anxious for the hour
to come when he should settle fairly down to his work again.


III

It piqued Oleron a little that his friend, Miss Bengough, should dismiss
with a glance the place he himself had found so singularly winning.
Indeed she scarcely lifted her eyes to it. But then she had always been
more or less like that--a little indifferent to the graces of life,
careless of appearances, and perhaps a shade more herself when she ate
biscuits from a paper bag than when she dined with greater observance of
the convenances. She was an unattached journalist of thirty-four, large,
showy, fair as butter, pink as a dog-rose, reminding one of a florist's
picked specimen bloom, and given to sudden and ample movements and moist
and explosive utterances. She "pulled a better living out of the pool"
(as she expressed it) than Oleron did; and by cunningly disguised puffs
of drapers and haberdashers she "pulled" also the greater part of her
very varied wardrobe. She left small whirlwinds of air behind her when
she moved, in which her veils and scarves fluttered and spun.

Oleron heard the flurry of her skirts on his staircase and her single
loud knock at his door when he had been a month in his new abode. Her
garments brought in the outer air, and she flung a bundle of ladies'
journals down on a chair.

"Don't knock off for me," she said across a mouthful of large-headed
hatpins as she removed her hat and veil. "I didn't know whether you were
straight yet, so I've brought some sandwiches for lunch. You've got
coffee, I suppose?--No, don't get up--I'll find the kitchen--"

"Oh, that's all right, I'll clear these things away. To tell the truth,
I'm rather glad to be interrupted," said Oleron.

He gathered his work together and put it away. She was already in the
kitchen; he heard the running of water into the kettle. He joined her,
and ten minutes later followed her back to the sitting-room with the
coffee and sandwiches on a tray. They sat down, with the tray on a small
table between them.

"Well, what do you think of the new place?" Oleron asked as she poured
out coffee.

"Hm!... Anybody'd think you were going to get married, Paul."

He laughed.

"Oh no. But it's an improvement on some of them, isn't it?"

"Is it? I suppose it is; I don't know. I liked the last place, in spite
of the black ceiling and no watertap. How's _Romilly_?"

Oleron thumbed his chin.

"Hm! I'm rather ashamed to tell you. The fact is, I've not got on very
well with it. But it will be all right on the night, as you used to say."

"Stuck?"

"Rather stuck."

"Got any of it you care to read to me?..."

Oleron had long been in the habit of reading portions of his work to Miss
Bengough occasionally. Her comments were always quick and practical,
sometimes directly useful, sometimes indirectly suggestive. She, in
return for his confidence, always kept all mention of her own work
sedulously from him. His, she said, was "real work"; hers merely filled
space, not always even grammatically.

"I'm afraid there isn't," Oleron replied, still meditatively dry-shaving
his chin. Then he added, with a little burst of candour, "The fact
is, Elsie, I've not written--not actually written--very much more of
it--_any_ more of it, in fact. But, of course, that doesn't mean I
haven't progressed. I've progressed, in one sense, rather alarmingly.
I'm now thinking of reconstructing the whole thing."

Miss Bengough gave a gasp. "Reconstructing!"

"Making Romilly herself a different type of woman. Somehow, I've begun to
feel that I'm not getting the most out of her. As she stands, I've
certainly lost interest in her to some extent."

"But--but--" Miss Bengough protested, "you had her so real, so _living_,
Paul!"

Oleron smiled faintly. He had been quite prepared for Miss Bengough's
disapproval. He wasn't surprised that she liked Romilly as she at present
existed; she would. Whether she realised it or not, there was much of
herself in his fictitious creation. Naturally Romilly would seem "real,"
"living," to her....

"But are you really serious, Paul?" Miss Bengough asked presently, with a
round-eyed stare.

"Quite serious."

"You're really going to scrap those fifteen chapters?"

"I didn't exactly say that."

"That fine, rich love-scene?"

"I should only do it reluctantly, and for the sake of something I thought
better."

"And that beautiful, _beau_tiful description of Romilly on the shore?"

"It wouldn't necessarily be wasted," he said a little uneasily.

But Miss Bengough made a large and windy gesture, and then let him have
it.

"Really, you are _too_ trying!" she broke out. "I do wish sometimes you'd
remember you're human, and live in a world! You know I'd be the _last_ to
wish you to lower your standard one inch, but it wouldn't be lowering it
to bring it within human comprehension. Oh, you're sometimes altogether
too godlike!... Why, it would be a wicked, criminal waste of your powers
to destroy those fifteen chapters! Look at it reasonably, now. You've
been working for nearly twenty years; you've now got what you've been
working for almost within your grasp; your affairs are at a most critical
stage (oh, don't tell me; I know you're about at the end of your money);
and here you are, deliberately proposing to withdraw a thing that will
probably make your name, and to substitute for it something that ten to
one nobody on earth will ever want to read--and small blame to them!
Really, you try my patience!"

Oleron had shaken his head slowly as she had talked. It was an old story
between them. The noisy, able, practical journalist was an admirable
friend--up to a certain point; beyond that ... well, each of us knows
that point beyond which we stand alone. Elsie Bengough sometimes said
that had she had one-tenth part of Oleron's genius there were few things
she could not have done--thus making that genius a quantitatively
divisible thing, a sort of ingredient, to be added to or subtracted
from in the admixture of his work. That it was a qualitative thing,
essential, indivisible, informing, passed her comprehension. Their
spirits parted company at that point. Oleron knew it. She did not appear
to know it.

"Yes, yes, yes," he said a little wearily, by-and-by, "practically you're
quite right, entirely right, and I haven't a word to say. If I could only
turn _Romilly_ over to you you'd make an enormous success of her. But
that can't be, and I, for my part, am seriously doubting whether she's
worth my while. You know what that means."

"What does it mean?" she demanded bluntly.

"Well," he said, smiling wanly, "what _does_ it mean when you're
convinced a thing isn't worth doing? You simply don't do it."

Miss Bengough's eyes swept the ceiling for assistance against this
impossible man.

"What utter rubbish!" she broke out at last. "Why, when I saw you last
you were simply oozing _Romilly_; you were turning her off at the rate of
four chapters a week; if you hadn't moved you'd have had her three-parts
done by now. What on earth possessed you to move right in the middle of
your most important work?"

Oleron tried to put her off with a recital of inconveniences, but she
wouldn't have it. Perhaps in her heart she partly suspected the reason.
He was simply mortally weary of the narrow circumstances of his life. He
had had twenty years of it--twenty years of garrets and roof-chambers
and dingy flats and shabby lodgings, and he was tired of dinginess and
shabbiness. The reward was as far off as ever--or if it was not, he no
longer cared as once he would have cared to put out his hand and take it.
It is all very well to tell a man who is at the point of exhaustion that
only another effort is required of him; if he cannot make it he is as far
off as ever....

"Anyway," Oleron summed up, "I'm happier here than I've been for a long
time. That's some sort of a justification."

"And doing no work," said Miss Bengough pointedly.

At that a trifling petulance that had been gathering in Oleron came to a
head.

"And why should I do nothing but work?" he demanded. "How much happier am
I for it? I don't say I don't love my work--when it's done; but I hate
doing it. Sometimes it's an intolerable burden that I simply long to be
rid of. Once in many weeks it has a moment, one moment, of glow and
thrill for me; I remember the days when it was all glow and thrill; and
now I'm forty-four, and it's becoming drudgery. Nobody wants it; I'm
ceasing to want it myself; and if any ordinary sensible man were to ask
me whether I didn't think I was a fool to go on, I think I should agree
that I was."

Miss Bengough's comely pink face was serious.

"But you knew all that, many, many years ago, Paul--and still you chose
it," she said in a low voice.

"Well, and how should I have known?" he demanded. "I didn't know. I was
told so. My heart, if you like, told me so, and I thought I knew. Youth
always thinks it knows; then one day it discovers that it is nearly
fifty--"

"Forty-four, Paul--"

"--forty-four, then--and it finds that the glamour isn't in front,
but behind. Yes, I knew and chose, if _that's_ knowing and
choosing ... but it's a costly choice we're called on to make when
we're young!"

Miss Bengough's eyes were on the floor. Without moving them she said,
"You're not regretting it, Paul?"

"Am I not?" he took her up. "Upon my word, I've lately thought I am! What
_do_ I get in return for it all?"

"You know what you get," she replied.

He might have known from her tone what else he could have had for the
holding up of a finger--herself. She knew, but could not tell him, that
he could have done no better thing for himself. Had he, any time these
ten years, asked her to marry him, she would have replied quietly,
"Very well; when?" He had never thought of it....

"Yours is the real work," she continued quietly. "Without you we jackals
couldn't exist. You and a few like you hold everything upon your
shoulders."

For a minute there was a silence. Then it occurred to Oleron that this
was common vulgar grumbling. It was not his habit. Suddenly he rose and
began to stack cups and plates on the tray.

"Sorry you catch me like this, Elsie," he said, with a little
laugh.... "No, I'll take them out; then we'll go for a walk, if you
like...."

He carried out the tray, and then began to show Miss Bengough round his
flat. She made few comments. In the kitchen she asked what an old faded
square of reddish frieze was, that Mrs. Barrett used as a cushion for her
wooden chair.

"That? I should be glad if you could tell _me_ what it is," Oleron
replied as he unfolded the bag and related the story of its finding in
the window-seat.

"I think I know what it is," said Miss Bengough. "It's been used to wrap
up a harp before putting it into its case."

"By Jove, that's probably just what it was," said Oleron. "I could make
neither head nor tail of it...."

They finished the tour of the flat, and returned to the sitting-room.

"And who lives in the rest of the house?" Miss Bengough asked.

"I dare say a tramp sleeps in the cellar occasionally. Nobody else."

"Hm!... Well, I'll tell you what I think about it, if you like."

"I should like."

"You'll never work here."

"Oh?" said Oleron quickly. "Why not?"

"You'll never finish _Romilly_ here. Why, I don't know, but you won't.
I know it. You'll have to leave before you get on with that book."

He mused for a moment, and then said:

"Isn't that a little--prejudiced, Elsie?"

"Perfectly ridiculous. As an argument it hasn't a leg to stand on. But
there it is," she replied, her mouth once more full of the large-headed
hat pins.

Oleron was reaching down his hat and coat. He laughed.

"I can only hope you're entirely wrong," he said, "for I shall be in a
serious mess if _Romilly_ isn't out in the autumn."


IV

As Oleron sat by his fire that evening, pondering Miss Bengough's
prognostication that difficulties awaited him in his work, he came to the
conclusion that it would have been far better had she kept her beliefs to
herself. No man does a thing better for having his confidence damped at
the outset, and to speak of difficulties is in a sense to make them.
Speech itself becomes a deterrent act, to which other discouragements
accrete until the very event of which warning is given is as likely as
not to come to pass. He heartily confounded her. An influence hostile
to the completion of _Romilly_ had been born.

And in some illogical, dogmatic way women seem to have, she had attached
this antagonistic influence to his new abode. Was ever anything so
absurd! "You'll never finish _Romilly_ here." ... Why not? Was this her
idea of the luxury that saps the springs of action and brings a man down
to indolence and dropping out of the race? The place was well enough--it
was entirely charming, for that matter--but it was not so demoralising as
all that! No; Elsie had missed the mark that time....

He moved his chair to look round the room that smiled, positively
smiled, in the firelight. He too smiled, as if pity was to be
entertained for a maligned apartment. Even that slight lack of robust
colour he had remarked was not noticeable in the soft glow. The drawn
chintz curtains--they had a flowered and trellised pattern, with baskets
and oaten pipes--fell in long quiet folds to the window-seats; the rows
of bindings in old bookcases took the light richly; the last trace of
sallowness had gone with the daylight; and, if the truth must be told,
it had been Elsie herself who had seemed a little out of the picture.

That reflection struck him a little, and presently he returned to it.
Yes, the room had, quite accidentally, done Miss Bengough a disservice
that afternoon. It had, in some subtle but unmistakable way, placed her,
marked a contrast of qualities. Assuming for the sake of argument the
slightly ridiculous proposition that the room in which Oleron sat _was_
characterised by a certain sparsity and lack of vigour; so much the worse
for Miss Bengough; she certainly erred on the side of redundancy and
general muchness. And if one must contrast abstract qualities, Oleron
inclined to the austere in taste....

Yes, here Oleron had made a distinct discovery; he wondered he had not
made it before. He pictured Miss Bengough again as she had appeared
that afternoon--large, showy, moistly pink, with that quality of the
prize bloom exuding, as it were, from her; and instantly she suffered in
his thought. He even recognised now that he had noticed something odd at
the time, and that unconsciously his attitude, even while she had been
there, had been one of criticism. The mechanism of her was a little
obvious; her melting humidity was the result of analysable processes; and
behind her there had seemed to lurk some dim shape emblematic of
mortality. He had never, during the ten years of their intimacy, dreamed
for a moment of asking her to marry him; none the less, he now felt for
the first time a thankfulness that he had not done so....

Then, suddenly and swiftly, his face flamed that he should be thinking
thus of his friend. What! Elsie Bengough, with whom he had spent weeks
and weeks of afternoons--she, the good chum, on whose help he would have
counted had all the rest of the world failed him--she, whose loyalty to
him would not, he knew, swerve as long as there was breath in her--Elsie
to be even in thought dissected thus! He was an ingrate and a cad....

Had she been there in that moment he would have abased himself before
her.

For ten minutes and more he sat, still gazing into the fire, with that
humiliating red fading slowly from his cheeks. All was still within and
without, save for a tiny musical tinkling that came from his kitchen--the
dripping of water from an imperfectly turned-off tap into the vessel
beneath it. Mechanically he began to beat with his finger to the faintly
heard falling of the drops; the tiny regular movement seemed to hasten
that shameful withdrawal from his face. He grew cool once more; and when
he resumed his meditation he was all unconscious that he took it up again
at the same point....

It was not only her florid superfluity of build that he had approached in
the attitude of criticism; he was conscious also of the wide differences
between her mind and his own. He felt no thankfulness that up to a
certain point their natures had ever run companionably side by side; he
was now full of questions beyond that point. Their intellects diverged;
there was no denying it; and, looking back, he was inclined to doubt
whether there had been any real coincidence. True, he had read his
writings to her and she had appeared to speak comprehendingly and to the
point; but what can a man do who, having assumed that another sees as he
does, is suddenly brought up sharp by something that falsifies and
discredits all that has gone before? He doubted all now.... It did for a
moment occur to him that the man who demands of a friend more than can be
given to him is in danger of losing that friend, but he put the thought
aside.

Again he ceased to think, and again moved his finger to the distant
dripping of the tap....

And now (he resumed by-and-by), if these things were true of Elsie
Bengough, they were also true of the creation of which she was the
prototype--Romilly Bishop. And since he could say of Romilly what for
very shame he could not say of Elsie, he gave his thoughts rein. He did
so in that smiling, fire-lighted room, to the accompaniment of the
faintly heard tap.

There was no longer any doubt about it; he hated the central character
of his novel. Even as he had described her physically she overpowered
the senses; she was coarse-fibred, over-coloured, rank. It became true
the moment he formulated his thought; Gulliver had described the
Brobdingnagian maids-of-honour thus: and mentally and spiritually she
corresponded--was unsensitive, limited, common. The model (he closed his
eyes for a moment)--the model stuck out through fifteen vulgar and
blatant chapters to such a pitch that, without seeing the reason, he had
been unable to begin the sixteenth. He marvelled that it had only just
dawned upon him.

And _this_ was to have been his Beatrice, his vision! As Elsie she was to
have gone into the furnace of his art, and she was to have come out the
Woman all men desire! Her thoughts were to have been culled from his own
finest, her form from his dearest dreams, and her setting wherever he
could find one fit for her worth. He had brooded long before making the
attempt; then one day he had felt her stir within him as a mother feels
a quickening, and he had begun to write; and so he had added chapter to
chapter....

And those fifteen sodden chapters were what he had produced!

Again he sat, softly moving his finger....

Then he bestirred himself.

She must go, all fifteen chapters of her. That was settled. For what was
to take her place his mind was a blank; but one thing at a time; a man
is not excused from taking the wrong course because the right one is not
immediately revealed to him. Better would come if it was to come;
in the meantime--

He rose, fetched the fifteen chapters, and read them over before he
should drop them into the fire.

But instead of putting them into the fire he let them fall from his hand.
He became conscious of the dripping of the tap again. It had a tinkling
gamut of four or five notes, on which it rang irregular changes, and it
was foolishly sweet and dulcimer-like. In his mind Oleron could see the
gathering of each drop, its little tremble on the lip of the tap, and the
tiny percussion of its fall, "Plink--plunk," minimised almost to
inaudibility. Following the lowest note there seemed to be a brief
phrase, irregularly repeated; and presently Oleron found himself waiting
for the recurrence of this phrase. It was quite pretty....

But it did not conduce to wakefulness, and Oleron dozed over his fire.

When he awoke again the fire had burned low and the flames of the candles
were licking the rims of the Sheffield sticks. Sluggishly he rose,
yawned, went his nightly round of door-locks and window-fastenings, and
passed into his bedroom. Soon he slept soundly.

But a curious little sequel followed on the morrow. Mrs. Barrett usually
tapped, not at his door, but at the wooden wall beyond which lay Oleron's
bed; and then Oleron rose, put on his dressing-gown, and admitted her. He
was not conscious that as he did so that morning he hummed an air; but
Mrs. Barrett lingered with her hand on the door-knob and her face a
little averted and smiling.

"De-ar me!" her soft falsetto rose. "But that will be a very o-ald tune,
Mr. Oleron! I will not have heard it this for-ty years!"

"What tune?" Oleron asked.

"The tune, indeed, that you was humming, sir."

Oleron had his thumb in the flap of a letter. It remained there.

"_I_ was humming?... Sing it, Mrs. Barrett."

Mrs. Barrett prut-prutted.

"I have no voice for singing, Mr. Oleron; it was Ann Pugh was the singer
of our family; but the tune will be very o-ald, and it is called 'The
Beckoning Fair One.'"

"Try to sing it," said Oleron, his thumb still in the envelope; and Mrs.
Barrett, with much dimpling and confusion, hummed the air.

"They do say it was sung to a harp, Mr. Oleron, and it will be very
o-ald," she concluded.

"And _I_ was singing that?"

"Indeed you wass. I would not be likely to tell you lies."

With a "Very well--let me have breakfast," Oleron opened his letter; but
the trifling circumstance struck him as more odd than he would have
admitted to himself. The phrase he had hummed had been that which he had
associated with the falling from the tap on the evening before.


V

Even more curious than that the commonplace dripping of an ordinary
water-tap should have tallied so closely with an actually existing air
was another result it had, namely, that it awakened, or seemed to awaken,
in Oleron an abnormal sensitiveness to other noises of the old house. It
has been remarked that silence obtains its fullest and most impressive
quality when it is broken by some minute sound; and, truth to tell, the
place was never still. Perhaps the mildness of the spring air operated on
its torpid old timbers; perhaps Oleron's fires caused it to stretch its
old anatomy; and certainly a whole world of insect life bored and
burrowed in its baulks and joists. At any rate, Oleron had only to sit
quiet in his chair and to wait for a minute or two in order to become
aware of such a change in the auditory scale as comes upon a man who,
conceiving the midsummer woods to be motionless and still, all at once
finds his ear sharpened to the crepitation of a myriad insects.

And he smiled to think of man's arbitrary distinction between that which
has life and that which has not. Here, quite apart from such recognisable
sounds as the scampering of mice, the falling of plaster behind his
panelling, and the popping of purses or coffins from his fire, was a
whole house talking to him had he but known its language. Beams settled
with a tired sigh into their old mortices; creatures ticked in the walls;
joints cracked, boards complained; with no palpable stirring of the air
window-sashes changed their positions with a soft knock in their frames.
And whether the place had life in this sense or not, it had at all events
a winsome personality. It needed but an hour of musing for Oleron to
conceive the idea that, as his own body stood in friendly relation to his
soul, so, by an extension and an attenuation, his habitation might
fantastically be supposed to stand in some relation to himself. He even
amused himself with the far-fetched fancy that he might so identify
himself with the place that some future tenant, taking possession, might
regard it as in a sense haunted. It would be rather a joke if he, a
perfectly harmless author, with nothing on his mind worse than a novel he
had discovered he must begin again, should turn out to be laying the
foundation of a future ghost!...

In proportion, however, as he felt this growing attachment to the fabric
of his abode, Elsie Bengough, from being merely unattracted, began to
show a dislike of the place that was more and more marked. And she did
not scruple to speak of her aversion.

"It doesn't belong to to-day at all, and for you especially it's bad,"
she said with decision. "You're only too ready to let go your hold on
actual things and to slip into apathy; _you_ ought to be in a place
with concrete floors and a patent gas-meter and a tradesmen's lift. And
it would do you all the good in the world if you had a job that made you
scramble and rub elbows with your fellow-men. Now, if I could get you a
job, for, say, two or three days a week, one that would allow you heaps
of time for your proper work--would you take it?"

Somehow, Oleron resented a little being diagnosed like this. He thanked
Miss Bengough, but without a smile.

"Thank you, but I don't think so. After all each of us has his own life
to live," he could not refrain from adding.

"His own life to live!... How long is it since you were out, Paul?"

"About two hours."

"I don't mean to buy stamps or to post a letter. How long is it since you
had anything like a stretch?"

"Oh, some little time perhaps. I don't know."

"Since I was here last?"

"I haven't been out much."

"And has _Romilly_ progressed much better for your being cooped up?"

"I think she has. I'm laying the foundations of her. I shall begin the
actual writing presently."

It seemed as if Miss Bengough had forgotten their tussle about the first
_Romilly_. She frowned, turned half away, and then quickly turned again.

"Ah!... So you've still got that ridiculous idea in your head?"

"If you mean," said Oleron slowly, "that I've discarded the old
_Romilly_, and am at work on a new one, you're right. I have still got
that idea in my head."

Something uncordial in his tone struck her; but she was a fighter. His
own absurd sensitiveness hardened her. She gave a "Pshaw!" of impatience.

"Where is the old one?" she demanded abruptly.

"Why?" asked Oleron.

"I want to see it. I want to show some of it to you. I want, if you're
not wool-gathering entirely, to bring you back to your senses."

This time it was he who turned his back. But when he turned round again
he spoke more gently.

"It's no good, Elsie. I'm responsible for the way I go, and you must
allow me to go it--even if it should seem wrong to you. Believe me, I
am giving thought to it.... The manuscript? I was on the point of burning
it, but I didn't. It's in that window-seat, if you must see it."

Miss Bengough crossed quickly to the window-seat, and lifted the lid.
Suddenly she gave a little exclamation, and put the back of her hand
to her mouth. She spoke over her shoulder:

"You ought to knock those nails in, Paul," she said.

He strode to her side.

"What? What is it? What's the matter?" he asked. "I did knock them
in--or, rather, pulled them out."

"You left enough to scratch with," she replied, showing her hand. From
the upper wrist to the knuckle of the little finger a welling red wound
showed.

"Good--Gracious!" Oleron ejaculated.... "Here, come to the bathroom and
bathe it quickly--"

He hurried her to the bathroom, turned on warm water, and bathed and
cleansed the bad gash. Then, still holding the hand, he turned cold water
on it, uttering broken phrases of astonishment and concern.

"Good Lord, how did that happen! As far as I knew I'd ... is this water
too cold? Does that hurt? I can't imagine how on earth ... there; that'll
do--"

"No--one moment longer--I can bear it," she murmured, her eyes closed....

Presently he led her back to the sitting-room and bound the hand in one
of his handkerchiefs; but his face did not lose its expression of
perplexity. He had spent half a day in opening and making serviceable the
three window-boxes, and he could not conceive how he had come to leave an
inch and a half of rusty nail standing in the wood. He himself had opened
the lids of each of them a dozen times and had not noticed any nail; but
there it was....

"It shall come out now, at all events," he muttered, as he went for a
pair of pincers. And he made no mistake about it that time.

Elsie Bengough had sunk into a chair, and her face was rather white; but
in her hand was the manuscript of _Romilly_. She had not finished with
_Romilly_ yet. Presently she returned to the charge.

"Oh, Paul, it will be the greatest mistake you ever, _ever_ made if you
do not publish this!" she said.

He hung his head, genuinely distressed. He couldn't get that incident of
the nail out of his head, and _Romilly_ occupied a second place in his
thoughts for the moment. But still she insisted; and when presently he
spoke it was almost as if he asked her pardon for something.

"What can I say, Elsie? I can only hope that when you see the new
version, you'll see how right I am. And if in spite of all you _don't_
like her, well ..." he made a hopeless gesture. "Don't you see that I
_must_ be guided by my own lights?"

She was silent.

"Come, Elsie," he said gently. "We've got along well so far; don't let us
split on this."

The last words had hardly passed his lips before he regretted them. She
had been nursing her injured hand, with her eyes once more closed; but
her lips and lids quivered simultaneously. Her voice shook as she spoke.

"I can't help saying it, Paul, but you are so greatly changed."

"Hush, Elsie," he murmured soothingly; "you've had a shock; rest for a
while. How could I change?"

"I don't know, but you are. You've not been yourself ever since you came
here. I wish you'd never seen the place. It's stopped your work, it's
making you into a person I hardly know, and it's made me horribly anxious
about you.... Oh, how my hand is beginning to throb!"

"Poor child!" he murmured. "Will you let me take you to a doctor and have
it properly dressed?"

"No--I shall be all right presently--I'll keep it raised----"

She put her elbow on the back of her chair, and the bandaged hand rested
lightly on his shoulder.

At that touch an entirely new anxiety stirred suddenly within him.
Hundreds of times previously, on their jaunts and excursions, she had
slipped her hand within his arm as she might have slipped it into the arm
of a brother, and he had accepted the little affectionate gesture as a
brother might have accepted it. But now, for the first time, there rushed
into his mind a hundred startling questions. Her eyes were still closed,
and her head had fallen pathetically back; and there was a lost and
ineffable smile on her parted lips. The truth broke in upon him. Good
God!... And he had never divined it!

And stranger than all was that, now that he did see that she was lost in
love of him, there came to him, not sorrow and humility and abasement,
but something else that he struggled in vain against--something entirely
strange and new, that, had he analysed it, he would have found to be
petulance and irritation and resentment and ungentleness. The sudden
selfish prompting mastered him before he was aware. He all but gave it
words. What was she doing there at all? Why was she not getting on with
her own work? Why was she here interfering with his? Who had given her
this guardianship over him that lately she had put forward so
assertively?--"Changed?" It was she, not himself, who had changed....

But by the time she had opened her eyes again he had overcome his
resentment sufficiently to speak gently, albeit with reserve.

"I wish you would let me take you to a doctor."

She rose.

"No, thank you, Paul," she said. "I'll go now. If I need a dressing I'll
get one; take the other hand, please. Good-bye--"

He did not attempt to detain her. He walked with her to the foot of the
stairs. Half-way along the narrow alley she turned.

"It would be a long way to come if you happened not to be in," she said;
"I'll send you a postcard the next time."

At the gate she turned again.

"Leave here, Paul," she said, with a mournful look. "Everything's wrong
with this house."

Then she was gone.

Oleron returned to his room. He crossed straight to the window-box. He
opened the lid and stood long looking at it. Then he closed it again and
turned away.

"That's rather frightening," he muttered. "It's simply not possible that
I should not have removed that nail...."


VI

Oleron knew very well what Elsie had meant when she had said that her
next visit would be preceded by a postcard. She, too, had realised that
at last, at last he knew--knew, and didn't want her. It gave him a
miserable, pitiful pang, therefore, when she came again within a week,
knocking at the door unannounced. She spoke from the landing; she did not
intend to stay, she said; and he had to press her before she would so
much as enter.

Her excuse for calling was that she had heard of an inquiry for short
stories that he might be wise to follow up. He thanked her. Then, her
business over, she seemed anxious to get away again. Oleron did not seek
to detain her; even he saw through the pretext of the stories; and he
accompanied her down the stairs.

But Elsie Bengough had no luck whatever in that house. A second accident
befell her. Half-way down the staircase there was the sharp sound of
splintering wood, and she checked a loud cry. Oleron knew the woodwork to
be old, but he himself had ascended and descended frequently enough
without mishap....

Elsie had put her foot through one of the stairs.

He sprang to her side in alarm.

"Oh, I say! My poor girl!"

She laughed hysterically.

"It's my weight--I know I'm getting fat--"

"Keep still--let me clear these splinters away," he muttered between his
teeth.

She continued to laugh and sob that it was her weight--she was getting
fat--

He thrust downwards at the broken boards. The extrication was no easy
matter, and her torn boot showed him how badly the foot and ankle
within it must be abraded.

"Good God--good God!" he muttered over and over again.

"I shall be too heavy for anything soon," she sobbed and laughed.

But she refused to reascend and to examine her hurt.

"No, let me go quickly--let me go quickly," she repeated.

"But it's a frightful gash!"

"No--not so bad--let me get away quickly--I'm--I'm not wanted."

At her words, that she was not wanted, his head dropped as if she had
given him a buffet.

"Elsie!" he choked, brokenly and shocked.

But she too made a quick gesture, as if she put something violently
aside.

"Oh, Paul, not _that_--not _you_--of course I do mean that too in a
sense--oh, you know what I mean!... But if the other can't be, spare
me this now! I--I wouldn't have come, but--but--oh, I did, I _did_ try to
keep away!"

It was intolerable, heartbreaking; but what could he do--what could he
say? He did not love her...

"Let me go--I'm not wanted--let me take away what's left of me--"

"Dear Elsie--you are very dear to me--"

But again she made the gesture, as of putting something violently aside.

"No, not that--not anything less--don't offer me anything less--leave me
a little pride--"

"Let me get my hat and coat--let me take you to a doctor," he muttered.

But she refused. She refused even the support of his arm. She gave
another unsteady laugh.

"I'm sorry I broke your stairs, Paul.... You will go and see about the
short stories, won't you?"

He groaned.

"Then if you won't see a doctor, will you go across the square and let
Mrs. Barrett look at you? Look, there's Barrett passing now--"

The long-nosed Barrett was looking curiously down the alley, but as
Oleron was about to call him he made off without a word. Elsie seemed
anxious for nothing so much as to be clear of the place, and finally
promised to go straight to a doctor, but insisted on going alone.

"Good-bye," she said.

And Oleron watched her until she was past the hatchet-like "To Let"
boards, as if he feared that even they might fall upon her and maim her.

That night Oleron did not dine. He had far too much on his mind. He
walked from room to room of his flat, as if he could have walked away
from Elsie Bengough's haunting cry that still rang in his ears. "I'm
not wanted--don't offer me anything less--let me take away what's left
of me--"

Oh, if he could only have persuaded himself that he loved her!

He walked until twilight fell, then, without lighting candles, he stirred
up the fire and flung himself into a chair.

Poor, poor Elsie!...

But even while his heart ached for her, it was out of the question.
If only he had known! If only he had used common observation! But
those walks, those sisterly takings of the arm--what a fool he had
been!... Well, it was too late now. It was she, not he, who must now
act--act by keeping away. He would help her all he could. He himself
would not sit in her presence. If she came, he would hurry her out again
as fast as he could.... Poor, poor Elsie!

His room grew dark; the fire burned dead; and he continued to sit,
wincing from time to time as a fresh tortured phrase rang again in his
ears.

Then suddenly, he knew not why, he found himself anxious for her in a new
sense--uneasy about her personal safety. A horrible fancy that even then
she might be looking over an embankment down into dark water, that she
might even now be glancing up at the hook on the door, took him. Women
had been known to do those things.... Then there would be an inquest, and
he himself would be called upon to identify her, and would be asked how
she had come by an ill-healed wound on the hand and a bad abrasion of the
ankle. Barrett would say that he had seen her leaving his house....

Then he recognised that his thoughts were morbid. By an effort of will he
put them aside, and sat for a while listening to the faint creakings
and tickings and rappings within his panelling.... If only he could have
married her!... But he couldn't. Her face had risen before him again
as he had seen it on the stairs, drawn with pain and ugly and swollen
with tears. Ugly--yes, positively blubbered; if tears were women's
weapons, as they were said to be, such tears were weapons turned against
themselves ... suicide again....

Then all at once he found himself attentively considering her two
accidents.

Extraordinary they had been, both of them. He _could not_ have left that
old nail standing in the wood; why, he had fetched tools specially from
the kitchen; and he was convinced that that step that had broken beneath
her weight had been as sound as the others. It was inexplicable. If these
things could happen, anything could happen. There was not a beam nor a
jamb in the place that might not fall without warning, not a plank that
might not crash inwards, not a nail that might not become a dagger. The
whole place was full of life even now; as he sat there in the dark he
heard its crowds of noises as if the house had been one great
microphone....

Only half conscious that he did so, he had been sitting for some time
identifying these noises, attributing to each crack or creak or knock its
material cause; but there was one noise which, again not fully conscious
of the omission, he had not sought to account for. It had last come some
minutes ago; it came again now--a sort of soft sweeping rustle that
seemed to hold an almost inaudibly minute crackling. For half a minute or
so it had Oleron's attention; then his heavy thoughts were of Elsie
Bengough again.

He was nearer to loving her in that moment than he had ever been. He
thought how to some men their loved ones were but the dearer for those
poor mortal blemishes that tell us we are but sojourners on earth, with a
common fate not far distant that makes it hardly worth while to do
anything but love for the time remaining. Strangling sobs, blearing
tears, bodies buffeted by sickness, hearts and mind callous and hard with
the rubs of the world--how little love there would be were these things a
barrier to love! In that sense he did love Elsie Bengough. What her
happiness had never moved in him her sorrow almost awoke....

Suddenly his meditation went. His ear had once more become conscious
of that soft and repeated noise--the long sweep with the almost
inaudible crackle in it. Again and again it came, with a curious
insistence and urgency. It quickened a little as he became increasingly
attentive ... it seemed to Oleron that it grew louder....

All at once he started bolt upright in his chair, tense and listening.
The silky rustle came again; he was trying to attach it to something....

The next moment he had leapt to his feet, unnerved and terrified. His
chair hung poised for a moment, and then went over, setting the
fire-irons clattering as it fell. There was only one noise in the world
like that which had caused him to spring thus to his feet....

The next time it came Oleron felt behind him at the empty air with his
hand, and backed slowly until he found himself against the wall.

"God in Heaven!" The ejaculation broke from Oleron's lips. The sound had
ceased.

The next moment he had given a high cry.

"What is it? What's there? _Who's_ there?"

A sound of scuttling caused his knees to bend under him for a moment; but
that, he knew, was a mouse. That was not something that his stomach
turned sick and his mind reeled to entertain. That other sound, the like
of which was not in the world, had now entirely ceased; and again he
called....

He called and continued to call; and then another terror, a terror of the
sound of his own voice, seized him. He did not dare to call again. His
shaking hand went to his pocket for a match, but found none. He thought
there might be matches on the mantelpiece--

He worked his way to the mantelpiece round a little recess, without for a
moment leaving the wall. Then his hand encountered the mantelpiece, and
groped along it. A box of matches fell to the hearth. He could just see
them in the firelight, but his hand could not pick them up until he had
cornered them inside the fender.

Then he rose and struck a light.

The room was as usual. He struck a second match. A candle stood on the
table. He lighted it, and the flame sank for a moment and then burned up
clear. Again he looked round.

There was nothing.

There was nothing; but there had been something, and might still be
something. Formerly, Oleron had smiled at the fantastic thought that,
by a merging and interplay of identities between himself and his
beautiful room, he might be preparing a ghost for the future; it had not
occurred to him _that there might have been a similar merging and
coalescence in the past_. Yet with this staggering impossibility he was
now face to face. Something did persist in the house; it had a tenant
other than himself; and that tenant, whatsoever or whosoever, had
appalled Oleron's soul by producing the sound of a woman brushing her
hair.


VII

Without quite knowing how he came to be there Oleron found himself
striding over the loose board he had temporarily placed on the step
broken by Miss Bengough. He was hatless, and descending the stairs. Not
until later did there return to him a hazy memory that he had left the
candle burning on the table, had opened the door no wider than was
necessary to allow the passage of his body, and had sidled out, closing
the door softly behind him. At the foot of the stairs another shock
awaited him. Something dashed with a flurry up from the disused cellars
and disappeared out of the door. It was only a cat, but Oleron gave a
childish sob.

He passed out of the gate, and stood for a moment under the "To Let"
boards, plucking foolishly at his lip and looking up at the glimmer
of light behind one of his red blinds. Then, still looking over his
shoulder, he moved stumblingly up the square. There was a small
public-house round the corner; Oleron had never entered it; but he
entered it now, and put down a shilling that missed the counter by
inches.

"B--b--bran--brandy," he said, and then stooped to look for the shilling.

He had the little sawdusted bar to himself; what company there
was--carters and labourers and the small tradesmen of the
neighbourhood--was gathered in the farther compartment, beyond the space
where the white-haired landlady moved among her taps and bottles. Oleron
sat down on a hardwood settee with a perforated seat, drank half his
brandy, and then, thinking he might as well drink it as spill it,
finished it.

Then he fell to wondering which of the men whose voices he heard across
the public-house would undertake the removal of his effects on the
morrow.

In the meantime he ordered more brandy.

For he did not intend to go back to that room where he had left the
candle burning. Oh no! He couldn't have faced even the entry and the
staircase with the broken step--certainly not that pith-white,
fascinating room. He would go back for the present to his old
arrangement, of workroom and separate sleeping-quarters; he would
go to his old landlady at once--presently--when he had finished his
brandy--and see if she could put him up for the night. His glass was
empty now....

He rose, had it refilled, and sat down again.

And if anybody asked his reason for removing again? Oh, he had reason
enough--reason enough! Nails that put themselves back into wood again
and gashed people's hands, steps that broke when you trod on them, and
women who came into a man's place and brushed their hair in the dark,
were reasons enough! He was querulous and injured about it all. He had
taken the place for himself, not for invisible women to brush their
hair in; that lawyer fellow in Lincoln's Inn should be told so, too,
before many hours were out; it was outrageous, letting people in for
agreements like that!

A cut-glass partition divided the compartment where Oleron sat from the
space where the white-haired landlady moved; but it stopped seven or
eight inches above the level of the counter. There was no partition at
the farther bar. Presently Oleron, raising his eyes, saw that faces were
watching him through the aperture. The faces disappeared when he looked
at them.

He moved to a corner where he could not be seen from the other bar; but
this brought him into line with the white-haired landlady.

She knew him by sight--had doubtless seen him passing and repassing; and
presently she made a remark on the weather. Oleron did not know what he
replied, but it sufficed to call forth the further remark that the winter
had been a bad one for influenza, but that the spring weather seemed to
be coming at last.... Even this slight contact with the commonplace
steadied Oleron a little; an idle, nascent wonder whether the landlady
brushed her hair every night, and, if so, whether it gave out those
little electric cracklings, was shut down with a snap; and Oleron was
better....

With his next glass of brandy he was all for going back to his flat. Not
go back? Indeed, he would go back! They should very soon see whether he
was to be turned out of his place like that! He began to wonder why he
was doing the rather unusual thing he was doing at that moment, unusual
for him--sitting hatless, drinking brandy, in a public-house. Suppose he
were to tell the white-haired landlady all about it--to tell her that a
caller had scratched her hand on a nail, had later had the bad luck to
put her foot through a rotten stair, and that he himself, in an old house
full of squeaks and creaks and whispers, had heard a minute noise and had
bolted from it in fright--what would she think of him? That he was mad,
of course.... Pshaw! The real truth of the matter was that he hadn't been
doing enough work to occupy him. He had been dreaming his days away,
filling his head with a lot of moonshine about a new _Romilly_ (as if the
old one was not good enough), and now he was surprised that the devil
should enter an empty head!

Yes, he would go back. He would take a walk in the air first--he hadn't
walked enough lately--and then he would take himself in hand, settle
the hash of that sixteenth chapter of _Romilly_ (fancy, he had actually
been fool enough to think of destroying fifteen chapters!) and
thenceforward he would remember that he had obligations to his fellow-men
and work to do in the world. There was the matter in a nutshell.

He finished his brandy and went out.

He had walked for some time before any other bearing of the matter than
that on himself occurred to him. At first, the fresh air had increased
the heady effect of the brandy he had drunk; but afterwards his mind grew
clearer than it had been since morning. And the clearer it grew, the less
final did his boastful self-assurances become, and the firmer his
conviction that, when all explanations had been made, there remained
something that could not be explained. His hysteria of an hour before had
passed; he grew steadily calmer; but the disquieting conviction remained.
A deep fear took possession of him. It was a fear for Elsie.

For something in his place was inimical to her safety. Of themselves, her
two accidents might not have persuaded him of this; but she herself had
said it. "_I'm not wanted here_..." And she had declared that there was
something wrong with the place. She had seen it before he had. Well and
good. One thing stood out clearly: namely, that if this was so, she must
be kept away for quite another reason than that which had so confounded
and humiliated Oleron. Luckily she had expressed her intention of staying
away; she must be held to that intention. He must see to it.

And he must see to it all the more that he now saw his first impulse,
never to set foot in the place again, was absurd. People did not do that
kind of thing. With Elsie made secure, he could not with any respect to
himself suffer himself to be turned out by a shadow, nor even by a danger
merely because it was a danger. He had to live somewhere, and he would
live there. He must return.

He mastered the faint chill of fear that came with the decision, and
turned in his walk abruptly. Should fear grow on him again he would,
perhaps, take one more glass of brandy....

But by the time he reached the short street that led to the square he was
too late for more brandy. The little public-house was still lighted, but
closed, and one or two men were standing talking on the kerb. Oleron
noticed that a sudden silence fell on them as he passed, and he noticed
further that the long-nosed Barrett, whom he passed a little lower down,
did not return his good-night. He turned in at the broken gate, hesitated
merely an instant in the alley, and then mounted his stairs again.

Only an inch of candle remained in the Sheffield stick, and Oleron did
not light another one. Deliberately he forced himself to take it up and
to make the tour of his five rooms before retiring. It was as he returned
from the kitchen across his little hall that he noticed that a letter lay
on the floor. He carried it into his sitting-room, and glanced at the
envelope before opening it.

It was unstamped, and had been put into the door by hand. Its handwriting
was clumsy, and it ran from beginning to end without comma or period.
Oleron read the first line, turned to the signature, and then finished
the letter.

It was from the man Barrett, and it informed Oleron that he, Barrett,
would be obliged if Mr. Oleron would make other arrangements for the
preparing of his breakfasts and the cleaning-out of his place. The sting
lay in the tail, that is to say, the postscript. This consisted of a text
of Scripture. It embodied an allusion that could only be to Elsie
Bengough....

A seldom-seen frown had cut deeply into Oleron's brow. So! That was it!
Very well; they would see about that on the morrow.... For the rest, this
seemed merely another reason why Elsie should keep away....

Then his suppressed rage broke out....

The foul-minded lot! The devil himself could not have given a leer at
anything that had ever passed between Paul Oleron and Elsie Bengough,
yet this nosing rascal must be prying and talking!...

Oleron crumpled the paper up, held it in the candle flame, and then
ground the ashes under his heel.

One useful purpose, however, the letter had served: it had created in
Oleron a wrathful blaze that effectually banished pale shadows.
Nevertheless, one other puzzling circumstance was to close the day. As he
undressed, he chanced to glance at his bed. The coverlets bore an impress
as if somebody had lain on them. Oleron could not remember that he
himself had lain down during the day--off-hand, he would have said that
certainly he had not; but after all he could not be positive. His
indignation for Elsie, acting possibly with the residue of the brandy in
him, excluded all other considerations; and he put out his candle, lay
down, and passed immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, which, in
the absence of Mrs. Barrett's morning call, lasted almost once round the
clock.


VIII

To the man who pays heed to that voice within him which warns him that
twilight and danger are settling over his soul, terror is apt to appear
an absolute thing, against which his heart must be safeguarded in a twink
unless there is to take place an alteration in the whole range and scale
of his nature. Mercifully, he has never far to look for safeguards. Of
the immediate and small and common and momentary things of life, of
usages and observances and modes and conventions, he builds up
fortifications against the powers of darkness. He is even content that,
not terror only, but joy also, should for working purposes be placed in
the category of the absolute things; and the last treason he will commit
will be that breaking down of terms and limits that strikes, not at one
man, but at the welfare of the souls of all.

In his own person, Oleron began to commit this treason. He began to
commit it by admitting the inexplicable and horrible to an increasing
familiarity. He did it insensibly, unconsciously, by a neglect of the
things that he now regarded it as an impertinence in Elsie Bengough to
have prescribed. Two months before, the words "a haunted house," applied
to his lovely bemusing dwelling, would have chilled his marrow; now,
his scale of sensation becoming depressed, he could ask "Haunted by
what?" and remain unconscious that horror, when it can be proved to be
relative, by so much loses its proper quality. He was setting aside the
landmarks. Mists and confusion had begun to enwrap him.

And he was conscious of nothing so much as of a voracious
inquisitiveness. He wanted _to know_. He was resolved to know. Nothing
but the knowledge would satisfy him; and craftily he cast about for means
whereby he might attain it.

He might have spared his craft. The matter was the easiest imaginable. As
in time past he had known, in his writing, moments when his thoughts
had seemed to rise of themselves and to embody themselves in words not to
be altered afterwards, so now the questions he put himself seemed to be
answered even in the moment of their asking. There was exhilaration in
the swift, easy processes. He had known no so such joy in his own power
since the days when his writing had been a daily freshness and a delight
to him. It was almost as if the course he must pursue was being dictated
to him.

And the first thing he must do, of course, was to define the problem. He
defined it in terms of mathematics. Granted that he had not the place to
himself; granted that the old house had inexpressibly caught and engaged
his spirit; granted that, by virtue of the common denominator of the
place, this unknown co-tenant stood in some relation to himself: what
next? Clearly, the nature of the other numerator must be ascertained.

And how? Ordinarily this would not have seemed simple, but to Oleron it
was now pellucidly clear. The key, _of course_, lay in his half-written
novel--or rather, in both _Romillys_, the old and the proposed new one.

A little while before Oleron would have thought himself mad to have
embraced such an opinion; now he accepted the dizzying hypothesis without
a quiver.

He began to examine the first and second _Romillys_.

From the moment of his doing so the thing advanced by leaps and bounds.
Swiftly he reviewed the history of the _Romilly_ of the fifteen chapters.
He remembered clearly now that he had found her insufficient on the very
first morning on which he had sat down to work in his new place. Other
instances of his aversion leaped up to confirm his obscure investigation.
There had come the night when he had hardly forborne to throw the whole
thing into the fire; and the next morning he had begun the planning of
the new _Romilly_. It had been on that morning that Mrs. Barrett,
overhearing him humming a brief phrase that the dripping of a tap the
night before had suggested, had informed him that he was singing some air
he had never in his life heard before, called "The Beckoning Fair
One."...

The Beckoning Fair One!...

With scarcely a pause in thought he continued:

The first _Romilly_ having been definitely thrown over, the second had
instantly fastened herself upon him, clamouring for birth in his brain.
He even fancied now, looking back, that there had been something like
passion, hate almost, in the supplanting, and that more than once a stray
thought given to his discarded creation had--(it was astonishing how
credible Oleron found the almost unthinkable idea)--had offended the
supplanter.

Yet that a malignancy almost homicidal should be extended to his
fiction's poor mortal prototype....

In spite of his inuring to a scale in which the horrible was now a thing
to be fingered and turned this way and that, a "Good God!" broke from
Oleron.

This intrusion of the first _Romilly's_ prototype into his thought
again was a factor that for the moment brought his inquiry into the
nature of his problem to a termination; the mere thought of Elsie was
fatal to anything abstract. For another thing, he could not yet think of
that letter of Barrett's, nor of a little scene that had followed it,
without a mounting of colour and a quick contraction of the brow. For,
wisely or not, he had had that argument out at once. Striding across the
square on the following morning, he had bearded Barrett on his own
doorstep. Coming back again a few minutes later, he had been strongly of
opinion that he had only made matters worse. The man had been vagueness
itself. He had not been to be either challenged or browbeaten into
anything more definite than a muttered farrago in which the words
"Certain things ... Mrs. Barrett ... respectable house ... if the cap
fits ... proceedings that shall be nameless," had been constantly
repeated.

"Not that I make any charge--" he had concluded.

"Charge!" Oleron had cried.

"I 'ave my idears of things, as I don't doubt you 'ave yours--"

"Ideas--mine!" Oleron had cried wrathfully, immediately dropping his
voice as heads had appeared at windows of the square. "Look you here, my
man; you've an unwholesome mind, which probably you can't help, but a
tongue which you can help, and shall! If there is a breath of this
repeated ..."

"I'll not be talked to on my own doorstep like this by anybody,..."
Barrett had blustered....

"You shall, and I'm doing it ..."

"Don't you forget there's a Gawd above all, Who 'as said..."

"You're a low scandalmonger!..."

And so forth, continuing badly what was already badly begun. Oleron had
returned wrathfully to his own house, and thenceforward, looking out
of his windows, had seen Barrett's face at odd times, lifting blinds or
peering round curtains, as if he sought to put himself in possession of
Heaven knew what evidence, in case it should be required of him.

The unfortunate occurrence made certain minor differences in Oleron's
domestic arrangements. Barrett's tongue, he gathered, had already been
busy; he was looked at askance by the dwellers of the square; and he
judged it better, until he should be able to obtain other help, to make
his purchases of provisions a little farther afield rather than at the
small shops of the immediate neighbourhood. For the rest, housekeeping
was no new thing to him, and he would resume his old bachelor habits....

Besides, he was deep in certain rather abstruse investigations, in which
it was better that he should not be disturbed.

He was looking out of his window one midday rather tired, not very well,
and glad that it was not very likely he would have to stir out of doors,
when he saw Elsie Bengough crossing the square towards his house. The
weather had broken; it was a raw and gusty day; and she had to force
her way against the wind that set her ample skirts bellying about her
opulent figure and her veil spinning and streaming behind her.

Oleron acted swiftly and instinctively. Seizing his hat, he sprang to the
door and descended the stairs at a run. A sort of panic had seized him.
She must be prevented from setting foot in the place. As he ran along the
alley he was conscious that his eyes went up to the eaves as if something
drew them. He did not know that a slate might not accidentally fall....

He met her at the gate, and spoke with curious volubleness.

"This is really too bad, Elsie! Just as I'm urgently called away! I'm
afraid it can't be helped though, and that you'll have to think me an
inhospitable beast." He poured it out just as it came into his head.

She asked if he was going to town.

"Yes, yes--to town," he replied. "I've got to call on--on Chambers. You
know Chambers, don't you? No, I remember you don't; a big man you once
saw me with.... I ought to have gone yesterday, and--" this he felt to be
a brilliant effort--"and he's going out of town this afternoon. To
Brighton. I had a letter from him this morning."

He took her arm and led her up the square. She had to remind him that his
way to town lay in the other direction.

"Of course--how stupid of me!" he said, with a little loud laugh. "I'm so
used to going the other way with you--of course; it's the other way to
the bus. Will you come along with me? I am so awfully sorry it's happened
like this...."

They took the street to the bus terminus.

This time Elsie bore no signs of having gone through interior struggles.
If she detected anything unusual in his manner she made no comment, and
he, seeing her calm, began to talk less recklessly through silences. By
the time they reached the bus terminus, nobody, seeing the pallid-faced
man without an overcoat and the large ample-skirted girl at his side,
would have supposed that one of them was ready to sink on his knees for
thankfulness that he had, as he believed, saved the other from a wildly
unthinkable danger.

They mounted to the top of the bus, Oleron protesting that he should not
miss his overcoat, and that he found the day, if anything, rather
oppressively hot. They sat down on a front seat.

Now that this meeting was forced upon him, he had something else to say
that would make demands upon his tact. It had been on his mind for some
time, and was, indeed, peculiarly difficult to put. He revolved it for
some minutes, and then, remembering the success of his story of a sudden
call to town, cut the knot of his difficulty with another lie.

"I'm thinking of going away for a little while, Elsie," he said.

She merely said, "Oh?"

"Somewhere for a change. I need a change. I think I shall go to-morrow,
or the day after. Yes, to-morrow, I think."

"Yes," she replied.

"I don't quite know how long I shall be," he continued. "I shall have to
let you know when I am back."

"Yes, let me know," she replied in an even tone.

The tone was, for her, suspiciously even. He was a little uneasy.

"You don't ask me where I'm going," he said, with a little cumbrous
effort to rally her.

She was looking straight before her, past the bus-driver.

"I know," she said.

He was startled. "How, you know?"

"You're not going anywhere," she replied.

He found not a word to say. It was a minute or so before she continued,
in the same controlled voice she had employed from the start.

"You're not going anywhere. You weren't going out this morning. You only
came out because I appeared; don't behave as if we were strangers, Paul."

A flush of pink had mounted to his cheeks. He noticed that the wind had
given her the pink of early rhubarb. Still he found nothing to say.

"Of course, you ought to go away," she continued. "I don't know whether
you look at yourself often in the glass, but you're rather noticeable.
Several people have turned to look at you this morning. So, of course,
you ought to go away. But you won't, and I know why."

He shivered, coughed a little, and then broke silence.

"Then if you know, there's no use in continuing this discussion," he said
curtly.

"Not for me, perhaps, but there is for you," she replied. "Shall I tell
you what I know?"

"No," he said in a voice slightly raised.

"No?" she asked, her round eyes earnestly on him.

"No."

Again he was getting out of patience with her; again he was conscious of
the strain. Her devotion and fidelity and love plagued him; she was only
humiliating both herself and him. It would have been bad enough had he
ever, by word or deed, given her cause for thus fastening herself on
him ... but there; that was the worst of that kind of life for a woman.
Women such as she, business women, in and out of offices all the time,
always, whether they realised it or not, made comradeship a cover for
something else. They accepted the unconventional status, came and
went freely, as men did, were honestly taken by men at their own
valuation--and then it turned out to be the other thing after all, and
they went and fell in love. No wonder there was gossip in shops and
squares and public houses! In a sense the gossipers were in the right of
it. Independent, yet not efficient; with some of womanhood's graces
forgone, and yet with all the woman's hunger and need; half
sophisticated, yet not wise; Oleron was tired of it all....

And it was time he told her so.

"I suppose," he said tremblingly, looking down between his knees, "I
suppose the real trouble is in the life women who earn their own living
are obliged to lead."

He could not tell in what sense she took the lame generality; she merely
replied, "I suppose so."

"It can't be helped," he continued, "but you do sacrifice a good deal."

She agreed: a good deal; and then she added after a moment, "What, for
instance?"

"You may or may not be gradually attaining a new status, but you're in a
false position to-day."

It was very likely, she said; she hadn't thought of it much in that
light--

"And," he continued desperately, "you're bound to suffer. Your most
innocent acts are misunderstood; motives you never dreamed of are
attributed to you; and in the end it comes to--" he hesitated a moment
and then took the plunge, "--to the sidelong look and the leer."

She took his meaning with perfect ease. She merely shivered a little as
she pronounced the name.

"Barrett?"

His silence told her the rest.

Anything further that was to be said must come from her. It came as the
bus stopped at a stage and fresh passengers mounted the stairs.

"You'd better get down here and go back, Paul," she said. "I understand
perfectly--perfectly. It isn't Barrett. You'd be able to deal with
Barrett. It's merely convenient for you to say it's Barrett. I know what
it is ... but you said I wasn't to tell you that. Very well. But before
you go let me tell you why I came up this morning."

In a dull tone he asked her why. Again she looked straight before her as
she replied:

"I came to force your hand. Things couldn't go on as they have been
going, you know; and now that's all over."

"All over," he repeated stupidly.

"All over. I want you now to consider yourself, as far as I'm concerned,
perfectly free. I make only one reservation."

He hardly had the spirit to ask her what that was.

"If _I_ merely need _you_," she said, "please don't give that a thought;
that's nothing; I shan't come near for that. But," she dropped her voice,
"if _you're_ in need of _me_, Paul--I shall know if you are, _and you
will be_--then I shall come at no matter what cost. You understand that?"

He could only groan.

"So that's understood," she concluded. "And I think that's all. Now go
back. I should advise you to walk back, for you're shivering--good-bye--"

She gave him a cold hand, and he descended. He turned on the edge of the
kerb as the bus started again. For the first time in all the years he had
known her she parted from him with no smile and no wave of her long arm.


IX

He stood on the kerb plunged in misery, looking after her as long as she
remained in sight; but almost instantly with her disappearance he felt
the heaviness lift a little from his spirit. She had given him his
liberty; true, there was a sense in which he had never parted with it,
but now was no time for splitting hairs; he was free to act, and all was
clear ahead. Swiftly the sense of lightness grew on him: it became a
positive rejoicing in his liberty; and before he was halfway home he had
decided what must be done next.

The vicar of the parish in which his dwelling was situated lived within
ten minutes of the square. To his house Oleron turned his steps. It was
necessary that he should have all the information he could get about this
old house with the insurance marks and the sloping "To Let" boards, and
the vicar was the person most likely to be able to furnish it. This last
preliminary out of the way, and--aha! Oleron chuckled--things might be
expected to happen!

But he gained less information than he had hoped for. The house, the
vicar said, was old--but there needed no vicar to tell Oleron that; it
was reputed (Oleron pricked up his ears) to be haunted--but there were
few old houses about which some such rumour did not circulate among the
ignorant; and the deplorable lack of Faith of the modern world, the vicar
thought, did not tend to dissipate these superstitions. For the rest,
his manner was the soothing manner of one who prefers not to make
statements without knowing how they will be taken by his hearer. Oleron
smiled as he perceived this.

"You may leave my nerves out of the question," he said. "How long has the
place been empty?"

"A dozen years, I should say," the vicar replied.

"And the last tenant--did you know him--or her?" Oleron was conscious of
a tingling of his nerves as he offered the vicar the alternative of sex.

"Him," said the vicar. "A man. If I remember rightly, his name was
Madley; an artist. He was a great recluse; seldom went out of the place,
and--" the vicar hesitated and then broke into a little gush of candour
"--and since you appear to have come for this information, and since it
is better that the truth should be told than that garbled versions should
get about, I don't mind saying that this man Madley died there, under
somewhat unusual circumstances. It was ascertained at the post-mortem
that there was not a particle of food in his stomach, although he was
found to be not without money. And his frame was simply worn out. Suicide
was spoken of, but you'll agree with me that deliberate starvation is, to
say the least, an uncommon form of suicide. An open verdict was
returned."

"Ah!" said Oleron.... "Does there happen to be any comprehensive history
of this parish?"

"No; partial ones only. I myself am not guiltless of having made a number
of notes on its purely ecclesiastical history, its registers and so
forth, which I shall be happy to show you if you would care to see them;
but it is a large parish, I have only one curate, and my leisure, as you
will readily understand ..."

The extent of the parish and the scantiness of the vicar's leisure
occupied the remainder of the interview, and Oleron thanked the vicar,
took his leave, and walked slowly home.

He walked slowly for a reason, twice turning away from the house within a
stone's-throw of the gate and taking another turn of twenty minutes or
so. He had a very ticklish piece of work now before him; it required the
greatest mental concentration; it was nothing less than to bring his
mind, if he might, into such a state of unpreoccupation and receptivity
that he should see the place as he had seen it on that morning when,
his removal accomplished, he had sat down to begin the sixteenth chapter
of the first _Romilly_.

For, could he recapture that first impression, he now hoped for far more
from it. Formerly, he had carried no end of mental lumber. Before the
influence of the place had been able to find him out at all, it had had
the inertia of those dreary chapters to overcome. No results had shown.
The process had been one of slow saturation, charging, filling up to a
brim. But now he was light, unburdened, rid at last both of that
_Romilly_ and of her prototype. Now for the new unknown, coy, jealous,
bewitching, Beckoning Fair!...

At half-past two of the afternoon he put his key into the Yale lock,
entered, and closed the door behind him....

His fantastic attempt was instantly and astonishingly successful. He
could have shouted with triumph as he entered the room; it was as if he
had _escaped_ into it. Once more, as in the days when his writing had had
a daily freshness and wonder and promise for him, he was conscious of
that new ease and mastery and exhilaration and release. The air of the
place seemed to hold more oxygen; as if his own specific gravity had
changed, his very tread seemed less ponderable. The flowers in the bowls,
the fair proportions of the meadowsweet-coloured panels and mouldings,
the polished floor, and the lofty and faintly starred ceiling, fairly
laughed their welcome. Oleron actually laughed back, and spoke aloud.

"Oh, you're pretty, pretty!" he flattered it.

Then he lay down on his couch.

He spent that afternoon as a convalescent who expected a dear visitor
might have spent it--in a delicious vacancy, smiling now and then as
if in his sleep, and ever lifting drowsy and contented eyes to his
alluring surroundings. He lay thus until darkness came, and, with
darkness, the nocturnal noises of the old house....

But if he waited for any specific happening, he waited in vain.

He waited similarly in vain on the morrow, maintaining, though with less
ease, that sensitised-plate-like condition of his mind. Nothing occurred
to give it an impression. Whatever it was which he so patiently wooed, it
seemed to be both shy and exacting.

Then on the third day he thought he understood. A look of gentle drollery
and cunning came into his eyes, and he chuckled.

"Oho, oho!... Well, if the wind sits in _that_ quarter we must see what
else there is to be done. What is there, now?... No, I won't send for
Elsie; we don't need a wheel to break the butterfly on; we won't go to
those lengths, my butterfly...."

He was standing musing, thumbing his lean jaw, looking aslant; suddenly
he crossed to his hall, took down his hat, and went out.

"My lady is coquettish, is she? Well, we'll see what a little neglect
will do," he chuckled as he went down the stairs.

He sought a railway station, got into a train, and spent the rest of the
day in the country. Oh, yes: Oleron thought _he_ was the man to deal with
Fair Ones who beckoned, and invited, and then took refuge in shyness and
hanging back!

He did not return until after eleven that night.

"_Now_, my Fair Beckoner!" he murmured as he walked along the alley and
felt in his pocket for his keys....

Inside his flat, he was perfectly composed, perfectly deliberate,
exceedingly careful not to give himself away. As if to intimate that he
intended to retire immediately, he lighted only a single candle; and as
he set out with it on his nightly round he affected to yawn. He went
first into his kitchen. There was a full moon, and a lozenge of
moonlight, almost peacock-blue by contrast with his candle-frame, lay on
the floor. The window was uncurtained, and he could see the reflection of
the candle, and, faintly, that of his own face, as he moved about. The
door of the powder-closet stood a little ajar, and he closed it before
sitting down to remove his boots on the chair with the cushion made of
the folded harp-bag. From the kitchen he passed to the bathroom. There,
another slant of blue moonlight cut the windowsill and lay across the
pipes on the wall. He visited his seldom-used study, and stood for a
moment gazing at the silvered roofs across the square. Then, walking
straight through his sitting-room, his stockinged feet making no noise,
he entered his bedroom and put the candle on the chest of drawers. His
face all this time wore no expression save that of tiredness. He had
never been wilier nor more alert.

His small bedroom fireplace was opposite the chest of drawers on which
the mirror stood, and his bed and the window occupied the remaining
sides of the room. Oleron drew down his blind, took off his coat, and
then stooped to get his slippers from under the bed.

He could have given no reason for the conviction, but that the
manifestation that for two days had been withheld was close at hand he
never for an instant doubted. Nor, though he could not form the faintest
guess of the shape it might take, did he experience fear. Startling or
surprising it might be; he was prepared for that; but that was all; his
scale of sensation had become depressed. His hand moved this way and that
under the bed in search of his slippers....

But for all his caution and method and preparedness, his heart all at
once gave a leap and a pause that was almost horrid. His hand had found
the slippers, but he was still on his knees; save for this circumstance
he would have fallen. The bed was a low one; the groping for the slippers
accounted for the turn of his head to one side; and he was careful to
keep the attitude until he had partly recovered his self-possession. When
presently he rose there was a drop of blood on his lower lip where he had
caught at it with his teeth, and his watch had jerked out of the pocket
of his waistcoat and was dangling at the end of its short leather
guard....

Then, before the watch had ceased its little oscillation, he was himself
again.

In the middle of his mantelpiece there stood a picture, a portrait of his
grandmother; he placed himself before this picture, so that he could see
in the glass of it the steady flame of the candle that burned behind him
on the chest of drawers. He could see also in the picture-glass the
little glancings of light from the bevels and facets of the objects about
the mirror and candle. But he could see more. These twinklings and
reflections and re-reflections did not change their position; but there
was one gleam that had motion. It was fainter than the rest, and it moved
up and down through the air. It was the reflection of the candle on
Oleron's black vulcanite comb, and each of its downward movements was
accompanied by a silky and crackling rustle.

Oleron, watching what went on in the glass of his grandmother's portrait,
continued to play his part. He felt for his dangling watch and began
slowly to wind it up. Then, for a moment ceasing to watch, he began to
empty his trousers pockets and to place methodically in a little row on
the mantelpiece the pennies and halfpennies he took from them. The
sweeping, minutely electric noise filled the whole bedroom, and had
Oleron altered his point of observation he could have brought the dim
gleam of the moving comb so into position that it would almost have
outlined his grandmother's head.

Any other head of which it might have been following the outline was
invisible.

Oleron finished the emptying of his pockets; then, under cover of another
simulated yawn, not so much summoning his resolution as overmastered by
an exhorbitant curiosity, he swung suddenly round. That which was being
combed was still not to be seen, but the comb did not stop. It had
altered its angle a little, and had moved a little to the left. It was
passing, in fairly regular sweeps, from a point rather more than five
feet from the ground, in a direction roughly vertical, to another point a
few inches below the level of the chest of drawers.

Oleron continued to act to admiration. He walked to his little washstand
in the corner, poured out water, and began to wash his hands. He removed
his waistcoat, and continued his preparations for bed. The combing did
not cease, and he stood for a moment in thought. Again his eyes twinkled.
The next was very cunning--

"Hm!... _I think I'll read for a quarter of an hour_," he said aloud....

He passed out of the room.

He was away a couple of minutes; when he returned again the room was
suddenly quiet. He glanced at the chest of drawers; the comb lay still,
between the collar he had removed and a pair of gloves. Without
hesitation Oleron put out his hand and picked it up. It was an ordinary
eighteenpenny comb, taken from a card in a chemist's shop, of a substance
of a definite specific gravity, and no more capable of rebellion against
the Laws by which it existed than are the worlds that keep their orbits
through the void. Oleron put it down again; then he glanced at the bundle
of papers he held in his hand. What he had gone to fetch had been the
fifteen chapters of the original _Romilly_.

"Hm!" he muttered as he threw the manuscript into a chair.... "As I
thought.... She's just blindly, ragingly, murderously jealous."

       *       *       *       *       *

On the night after that, and on the following night, and for many nights
and days, so many that he began to be uncertain about the count of them,
Oleron, courting, cajoling, neglecting, threatening, beseeching, eaten
out with unappeased curiosity and regardless that his life was becoming
one consuming passion and desire, continued his search for the unknown
co-numerator of his abode.


X

As time went on, it came to pass that few except the postman mounted
Oleron's stairs; and since men who do not write letters receive few, even
the postman's tread became so infrequent that it was not heard more than
once or twice a week. There came a letter from Oleron's publishers,
asking when they might expect to receive the manuscript of his new book;
he delayed for some days to answer it, and finally forgot it. A second
letter came, which also he failed to answer. He received no third.

The weather grew bright and warm. The privet bushes among the
chopper-like notice-boards flowered, and in the streets where Oleron did
his shopping the baskets of flower-women lined the kerbs. Oleron
purchased flowers daily; his room clamoured for flowers, fresh and
continually renewed; and Oleron did not stint its demands. Nevertheless,
the necessity for going out to buy them began to irk him more and more,
and it was with a greater and ever greater sense of relief that he
returned home again. He began to be conscious that again his scale of
sensation had suffered a subtle change--a change that was not restoration
to its former capacity, but an extension and enlarging that once more
included terror. It admitted it in an entirely new form. _Lux orco,
tenebrae Jovi_. The name of this terror was agoraphobia. Oleron had begun
to dread air and space and the horror that might pounce upon the
unguarded back.

Presently he so contrived it that his food and flowers were delivered
daily at his door. He rubbed his hands when he had hit upon this
expedient. That was better! Now he could please himself whether he went
out or not....

Quickly he was confirmed in his choice. It became his pleasure to remain
immured.

But he was not happy--or, if he was, his happiness took an extraordinary
turn. He fretted discontentedly, could sometimes have wept for mere
weakness and misery; and yet he was dimly conscious that he would not
have exchanged his sadness for all the noisy mirth of the world outside.
And speaking of noise: noise, much noise, now caused him the acutest
discomfort. It was hardly more to be endured than that new-born fear that
kept him, on the increasingly rare occasions when he did go out, sidling
close to walls and feeling friendly railings with his hand. He moved from
room to room softly and in slippers, and sometimes stood for many seconds
closing a door so gently that not a sound broke the stillness that was in
itself a delight. Sunday now became an intolerable day to him, for, since
the coming of the fine weather, there had begun to assemble in the square
under his windows each Sunday morning certain members of the sect to
which the long-nosed Barrett adhered. These came with a great drum and
large brass-bellied instruments; men and women uplifted anguished voices,
struggling with their God; and Barrett himself, with upraised face and
closed eyes and working brows, prayed that the sound of his voice might
penetrate the ears of all unbelievers--as it certainly did Oleron's. One
day, in the middle of one of these rhapsodies, Oleron sprang to his blind
and pulled it down, and heard as he did so his own name made the subject
of a fresh torrent of outpouring.

And sometimes, but not as expecting a reply, Oleron stood still and
called softly. Once or twice he called "Romilly!" and then waited; but
more often his whispering did not take the shape of a name.

There was one spot in particular of his abode that he began to haunt with
increasing persistency. This was just within the opening of his bedroom
door. He had discovered one day that by opening every door in his place
(always excepting the outer one, which he only opened unwillingly) and by
placing himself on this particular spot, he could actually see to a
greater or less extent into each of his five rooms without changing his
position. He could see the whole of his sitting-room, all of his bedroom
except the part hidden by the open door, and glimpses of his kitchen,
bathroom, and of his rarely used study. He was often in this place,
breathless and with his finger on his lip. One day, as he stood there, he
suddenly found himself wondering whether this Madley, of whom the vicar
had spoken, had ever discovered the strategic importance of the bedroom
entry.

Light, moreover, now caused him greater disquietude than did darkness.
Direct sunlight, of which, as the sun passed daily round the house, each
of his rooms had now its share, was like a flame in his brain; and even
diffused light was a dull and numbing ache. He began, at successive hours
of the day, one after another, to lower his crimson blinds. He made short
and daring excursions in order to do this; but he was ever careful to
leave his retreat open, in case he should have sudden need of it.
Presently this lowering of the blinds had become a daily methodical
exercise, and his rooms, when he had been his round, had the blood-red
half-light of a photographer's darkroom.

One day, as he drew down the blind of his little study and backed in good
order out of the room again, he broke into a soft laugh.

"_That_ bilks Mr. Barrett!" he said; and the baffling of Barrett
continued to afford him mirth for an hour.

But on another day, soon after, he had a fright that left him trembling
also for an hour. He had seized the cord to darken the window over the
seat in which he had found the harp-bag, and was standing with his back
well protected in the embrasure, when he thought he saw the tail of a
black-and-white check skirt disappear round the corner of the house. He
could not be sure--had he run to the window of the other wall, which was
blinded, the skirt must have been already past--but he was _almost_ sure
that it was Elsie. He listened in an agony of suspense for her tread on
the stairs....

But no tread came, and after three or four minutes he drew a long breath
of relief.

"By Jove, but that would have compromised me horribly!" he muttered....

And he continued to mutter from time to time, "Horribly
compromising ... _no_ woman would stand that ... not _any_ kind of
woman ... oh, compromising in the extreme!"

Yet he was not happy. He could not have assigned the cause of the fits of
quiet weeping which took him sometimes; they came and went, like the
fitful illumination of the clouds that travelled over the square; and
perhaps, after all, if he was not happy, he was not unhappy. Before
he could be unhappy something must have been withdrawn, and nothing had
yet been withdrawn from him, for nothing had been granted. He was waiting
for that granting, in that flower-laden, frightfully enticing apartment
of his, with the pith-white walls tinged and subdued by the crimson
blinds to a blood-like gloom.

He paid no heed to it that his stock of money was running perilously low,
nor that he had ceased to work. Ceased to work? He had not ceased to
work. They knew very little about it who supposed that Oleron had ceased
to work! He was in truth only now beginning to work. He was preparing
such a work ... such a work ... such a Mistress was a-making in the
gestation of his Art ... let him but get this period of probation and
poignant waiting over and men should see.... How _should_ men know her,
this Fair One of Oleron's, until Oleron himself knew her? Lovely radiant
creations are not thrown off like How-d'ye-do's. The men to whom it is
committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must
swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron
pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit that, ever
eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does not slacken. Let Oleron but
hunt this Huntress a little longer... he would have her sparkling
and panting in his arms yet.... Oh no: they were very far from the truth
who supposed that Oleron had ceased to work!

And if all else was falling away from Oleron, gladly he was letting it
go. So do we all when our Fair Ones beckon. Quite at the beginning we
wink, and promise ourselves that we will put Her Ladyship through her
paces, neglect her for a day, turn her own jealous wiles against her,
flout and ignore her when she comes wheedling; perhaps there lurks within
us all the time a heartless sprite who is never fooled; but in the end
all falls away. She beckons, beckons, and all goes....

And so Oleron kept his strategic post within the frame of his bedroom
door, and watched, and waited, and smiled, with his finger on his
lips.... It was his duteous service, his worship, his troth-plighting,
all that he had ever known of Love. And when he found himself, as he now
and then did, hating the dead man Madley, and wishing that he had never
lived, he felt that that, too, was an acceptable service....

But, as he thus prepared himself, as it were, for a Marriage, and moped
and chafed more and more that the Bride made no sign, he made a discovery
that he ought to have made weeks before.

It was through a thought of the dead Madley that he made it. Since that
night when he had thought in his greenness that a little studied neglect
would bring the lovely Beckoner to her knees, and had made use of her own
jealousy to banish her, he had not set eyes on those fifteen discarded
chapters of _Romilly_. He had thrown them back into the window-seat,
forgotten their very existence. But his own jealousy of Madley put him in
mind of hers of her jilted rival of flesh and blood, and he remembered
them.... Fool that he had been! Had he, then, expected his Desire to
manifest herself while there still existed the evidence of his divided
allegiance? What, and she with a passion so fierce and centred that it
had not hesitated at the destruction, twice attempted, of her rival? Fool
that he had been!...

But if _that_ was all the pledge and sacrifice she required she should
have it--ah, yes, and quickly!

He took the manuscript from the window-seat, and brought it to the fire.

He kept his fire always burning now; the warmth brought out the last
vestige of odour of the flowers with which his room was banked. He did
not know what time it was; long since he had allowed his clock to run
down--it had seemed a foolish measurer of time in regard to the
stupendous things that were happening to Oleron; but he knew it was late.
He took the _Romilly_ manuscript and knelt before the fire.

But he had not finished removing the fastening that held the sheets
together before he suddenly gave a start, turned his head over his
shoulder, and listened intently. The sound he had heard had not been
loud--it had been, indeed, no more than a tap, twice or thrice
repeated--but it had filled Oleron with alarm. His face grew dark as
it came again.

He heard a voice outside on his landing.

"Paul!... Paul!..."

It was Elsie's voice.

"Paul!... I know you're in... I want to see you...."

He cursed her under his breath, but kept perfectly still. He did not
intend to admit her.

"Paul!... You're in trouble.... I believe you're in danger... at least
come to the door!..."

Oleron smothered a low laugh. It somehow amused him that she, in such
danger herself, should talk to him of _his_ danger!... Well, if she was,
serve her right; she knew, or said she knew, all about it....

"Paul!... Paul!..."

"_Paul!... Paul!_..." He mimicked her under his breath.

"Oh, Paul, it's _horrible_!..."

Horrible, was it? thought Oleron. Then let her get away....

"I only want to help you, Paul.... I didn't promise not to come if you
needed me...."

He was impervious to the pitiful sob that interrupted the low cry. The
devil take the woman! Should he shout to her to go away and not come
back? No: let her call and knock and sob. She had a gift for sobbing; she
mustn't think her sobs would move him. They irritated him, so that he set
his teeth and shook his fist at her, but that was all. Let her sob.

"_Paul!... Paul!_..."

With his teeth hard set, he dropped the first page of _Romilly_ into the
fire. Then he began to drop the rest in, sheet by sheet.

For many minutes the calling behind his door continued; then suddenly it
ceased. He heard the sound of feet slowly descending the stairs. He
listened for the noise of a fall or a cry or the crash of a piece of the
handrail of the upper landing; but none of these things came. She was
spared. Apparently her rival suffered her to crawl abject and beaten
away. Oleron heard the passing of her steps under his window; then she
was gone.

He dropped the last page into the fire, and then, with a low laugh rose.
He looked fondly round his room.

"Lucky to get away like that," he remarked. "She wouldn't have got away
if I'd given her as much as a word or a look! What devils these women
are!... But no; I oughtn't to say that; one of 'em showed
forbearance...."

Who showed forbearance? And what was forborne? Ah, Oleron
knew!... Contempt, no doubt, had been at the bottom of it, but that
didn't matter: the pestering creature had been allowed to go unharmed.
Yes, she was lucky; Oleron hoped she knew it....

And now, now, now for his reward!

Oleron crossed the room. All his doors were open; his eyes shone as he
placed himself within that of his bedroom.

Fool that he had been, not to think of destroying the manuscript
sooner!...

       *       *       *       *       *

How, in a houseful of shadows, should he know his own Shadow? How, in a
houseful of noises, distinguish the summons he felt to be at hand? Ah,
trust him! He would know! The place was full of a jugglery of dim lights.
The blind at his elbow that allowed the light of a street lamp to
struggle vaguely through--the glimpse of greeny blue moonlight seen
through the distant kitchen door--the sulky glow of the fire under the
black ashes of the burnt manuscript--the glimmering of the tulips and the
moon-daisies and narcissi in the bowls and jugs and jars--these did not
so trick and bewilder his eyes that he would not know his Own! It was he,
not she, who had been delaying the shadowy Bridal; he hung his head for a
moment in mute acknowledgment; then he bent his eyes on the deceiving,
puzzling gloom again. He would have called her name had he known it--but
now he would not ask her to share even a name with the other....

His own face, within the frame of the door, glimmered white as the
narcissi in the darkness....

A shadow, light as fleece, seemed to take shape in the kitchen (the time
had been when Oleron would have said that a cloud had passed over the
unseen moon). The low illumination on the blind at his elbow grew dimmer
(the time had been when Oleron would have concluded that the lamplighter
going his rounds had turned low the flame of the lamp). The fire settled,
letting down the black and charred papers; a flower fell from a bowl,
and lay indistinct upon the floor; all was still; and then a stray
draught moved through the old house, passing before Oleron's face....

Suddenly, inclining his head, he withdrew a little from the door-jamb.
The wandering draught caused the door to move a little on its hinges.
Oleron trembled violently, stood for a moment longer, and then, putting
his hand out to the knob, softly drew the door to, sat down on the
nearest chair, and waited, as a man might await the calling of his name
that should summon him to some weighty, high and privy Audience....


XI

One knows not whether there can be human compassion for anemia of the
soul. When the pitch of Life is dropped, and the spirit is so put over
and reversed that that only is horrible which before was sweet and
worldly and of the day, the human relation disappears. The sane soul
turns appalled away, lest not merely itself, but sanity should suffer.
We are not gods. We cannot drive out devils. We must see selfishly
to it that devils do not enter into ourselves.

And this we must do even though Love so transfuse us that we may well
deem our nature to be half divine. We shall but speak of honour and duty
in vain. The letter dropped within the dark door will lie unregarded, or,
if regarded for a brief instant between two unspeakable lapses, left and
forgotten again. The telegram will be undelivered, nor will the whistling
messenger (wiselier guided than he knows to whistle) be conscious as he
walks away of the drawn blind that is pushed aside an inch by a finger
and then fearfully replaced again. No: let the miserable wrestle with his
own shadows; let him, if indeed he be so mad, clip and strain and enfold
and couch the succubus; but let him do so in a house into which not an
air of Heaven penetrates, nor a bright finger of the sun pierces the
filthy twilight. The lost must remain lost. Humanity has other business
to attend to.

For the handwriting of the two letters that Oleron, stealing noiselessly
one June day into his kitchen to rid his sitting-room of an armful of
fetid and decaying flowers, had seen on the floor within his door, had
had no more meaning for him than if it had belonged to some dim and
faraway dream. And at the beating of the telegraph-boy upon the door,
within a few feet of the bed where he lay, he had gnashed his teeth and
stopped his ears. He had pictured the lad standing there, just beyond his
partition, among packets of provisions and bundles of dead and dying
flowers. For his outer landing was littered with these. Oleron had feared
to open his door to take them in. After a week, the errand lads had
reported that there must be some mistake about the order, and had left no
more. Inside, in the red twilight, the old flowers turned brown and fell
and decayed where they lay.

Gradually his power was draining away. The Abomination fastened on
Oleron's power. The steady sapping sometimes left him for many hours
of prostration gazing vacantly up at his red-tinged ceiling, idly
suffering such fancies as came of themselves to have their way with him.
Even the strongest of his memories had no more than a precarious hold
upon his attention. Sometimes a flitting half-memory, of a novel to be
written, a novel it was important that he should write, tantalised him
for a space before vanishing again; and sometimes whole novels, perfect,
splendid, established to endure, rose magically before him. And sometimes
the memories were absurdly remote and trivial, of garrets he had
inhabited and lodgings that had sheltered him, and so forth. Oleron had
known a good deal about such things in his time, but all that was now
past. He had at last found a place which he did not intend to leave until
they fetched him out--a place that some might have thought a little on
the green-sick side, that others might have considered to be a little too
redolent of long-dead and morbid things for a living man to be mewed up
in, but ah, so irresistible, with such an authority of its own, with such
an associate of its own, and a place of such delights when once a man had
ceased to struggle against its inexorable will! A novel? Somebody ought
to write a novel about a place like that! There must be lots to write
about in a place like that if one could but get to the bottom of it! It
had probably already been painted, by a man called Madley who had lived
there ... but Oleron had not known this Madley--had a strong feeling
that he wouldn't have liked him--would rather he had lived somewhere
else--really couldn't stand the fellow--hated him, Madley, in fact. (Aha!
That was a joke!). He seriously doubted whether the man had led the life
he ought; Oleron was in two minds sometimes whether he wouldn't tell that
long-nosed guardian of the public morals across the way about him; but
probably he knew, and had made his praying hullabaloos for him also.
That was his line. Why, Oleron himself had had a dust-up with him about
something or other ... some girl or other ... Elsie Bengough her name
was, he remembered....

Oleron had moments of deep uneasiness about this Elsie Bengough. Or
rather, he was not so much uneasy about her as restless about the things
she did. Chief of these was the way in which she persisted in thrusting
herself into his thoughts; and, whenever he was quick enough, he sent her
packing the moment she made her appearance there. The truth was that she
was not merely a bore; she had always been that; it had now come to the
pitch when her very presence in his fancy was inimical to the full
enjoyment of certain experiences.... She had no tact; really ought to
have known that people are not at home to the thoughts of everybody all
the time; ought in mere politeness to have allowed him certain seasons
quite to himself; and was monstrously ignorant of things if she did not
know, as she appeared not to know, that there were certain special hours
when a man's veins ran with fire and daring and power, in which ... well,
in which he had a reasonable right to treat folk as he had treated that
prying Barrett--to shut them out completely.... But no: up she popped,
the thought of her, and ruined all. Bright towering fabrics, by the side
of which even those perfect, magical novels of which he dreamed were dun
and grey, vanished utterly at her intrusion. It was as if a fog should
suddenly quench some fair-beaming star, as if at the threshold of some
golden portal prepared for Oleron a pit should suddenly gape, as if a
bat-like shadow should turn the growing dawn to mirk and darkness
again.... Therefore, Oleron strove to stifle even the nascent thought
of her.

Nevertheless, there came an occasion on which this woman Bengough
absolutely refused to be suppressed. Oleron could not have told exactly
when this happened; he only knew by the glimmer of the street lamp on his
blind that it was some time during the night, and that for some time she
had not presented herself.

He had no warning, none, of her coming; she just came--was there. Strive
as he would, he could not shake off the thought of her nor the image of
her face. She haunted him.

But for her to come at that moment of all moments!... Really, it was past
belief! How she could endure it, Oleron could not conceive! Actually, to
look on, as it were, at the triumph of a Rival.... Good God! It was
monstrous! tact--reticence--he had never credited her with an
overwhelming amount of either: but he had never attributed mere--oh,
there was no word for it! Monstrous--monstrous! Did she intend
thenceforward.... Good God! To look on!...

Oleron felt the blood rush up to the roots of his hair with anger against
her.

"Damnation take her!" he choked....

But the next moment his heat and resentment had changed to a cold sweat
of cowering fear. Panic-stricken, he strove to comprehend what he had
done. For though he knew not what, he knew he had done something,
something fatal, irreparable, blasting. Anger he had felt, but not _this_
blaze of ire that suddenly flooded the twilight of his consciousness with
a white infernal light. _That_ appalling flash was not his--not his
_that_ open rift of bright and searing Hell--not his, not his! His had
been the hand of a child, preparing a puny blow; but what was _this
other_ horrific hand that was drawn back to strike in the same place? Had
_he_ set that in motion? Had _he_ provided the spark that had touched off
the whole accumulated power of that formidable and relentless place? He
did not know. He only knew that that poor igniting particle in himself
was blown out, that--Oh, impossible!--a clinging kiss (how else to
express it?) had changed on his very lips to a gnashing and a removal,
and that for very pity of the awful odds he must cry out to her against
whom he had lately raged to guard herself ... guard herself....

"_Look out!_" he shrieked aloud....

       *       *       *       *       *

The revulsion was instant. As if a cold slow billow had broken over him,
he came to to find that he was lying in his bed, that the mist and horror
that had for so long enwrapped him had departed, that he was Paul Oleron,
and that he was sick, naked, helpless, and unutterably abandoned and
alone. His faculties, though weak, answered at last to his calls upon
them; and he knew that it must have been a hideous nightmare that had
left him sweating and shaking thus.

Yes, he was himself, Paul Oleron, a tired novelist, already past the
summit of his best work, and slipping downhill again empty-handed from it
all. He had struck short in his life's aim. He had tried too much, had
over-estimated his strength, and was a failure, a failure....

It all came to him in the single word, enwrapped and complete; it needed
no sequential thought; he was a failure. He had missed....

And he had missed not one happiness, but two. He had missed the ease of
this world, which men love, and he had missed also that other shining
prize for which men forgo ease, the snatching and holding and triumphant
bearing up aloft of which is the only justification of the mad adventurer
who hazards the enterprise. And there was no second attempt. Fate has no
morrow. Oleron's morrow must be to sit down to profitless, ill-done,
unrequired work again, and so on the morrow after that, and the morrow
after that, and as many morrows as there might be....

He lay there, weakly yet sanely considering it....

And since the whole attempt had failed, it was hardly worth while to
consider whether a little might not be saved from the general wreck. No
good would ever come of that half-finished novel. He had intended that it
should appear in the autumn; was under contract that it should appear; no
matter; it was better to pay forfeit to his publishers than to waste what
days were left. He was spent; age was not far off; and paths of wisdom
and sadness were the properest for the remainder of the journey....

If only he had chosen the wife, the child the faithful friend at the
fireside, and let them follow an _ignis fatuus_ that list!...

In the meantime it began to puzzle him exceedingly what he should be so
weak, that his room should smell so overpoweringly of decaying vegetable
matter, and that his hand, chancing to stray to his face in the darkness,
should encounter a beard.

"Most extraordinary!" he began to mutter to himself. "Have I been ill? Am
I ill now? And if so, why have they left me alone?... Extraordinary!..."

He thought he heard a sound from the kitchen or bathroom. He rose a
little on his pillow, and listened.... Ah! He was not alone, then! It
certainly would have been extraordinary if they had left him ill and
alone--Alone? Oh no. He would be looked after. He wouldn't be left, ill,
to shift for himself. If everybody else had forsaken him, he could trust
Elsie Bengough, the dearest chum he had, for that ... bless her faithful
heart!

But suddenly a short, stifled, spluttering cry rang sharply out:

"_Paul!_"

It came from the kitchen.

And in the same moment it flashed upon Oleron, he knew not how, that two,
three, five, he knew not how many minutes before, another sound, unmarked
at the time but suddenly transfixing his attention now, had striven to
reach his intelligence. This sound had been the slight touch of metal on
metal--just such a sound as Oleron made when he put his key into the
lock.

"Hallo!... Who's that?" he called sharply from his bed.

He had no answer.

He called again. "Hallo!... Who's there?... Who is it?"

This time he was sure he heard noises, soft and heavy, in the kitchen.

"This is a queer thing altogether," he muttered. "By Jove, I'm as weak as
a kitten too.... Hallo, there! Somebody called, didn't they?... Elsie! Is
that you?..."

Then he began to knock with his hand on the wall at the side of his bed.

"Elsie!... Elsie!... You called, didn't you?... Please come here, whoever
it is!..."

There was a sound as of a closing door, and then silence. Oleron began to
get rather alarmed.

"It may be a nurse," he muttered; "Elsie'd have to get me a nurse, of
course. She'd sit with me as long as she could spare the time, brave
lass, and she'd get a nurse for the rest.... But it was awfully like her
voice.... Elsie, or whoever it is!... I can't make this out at all. I
must go and see what's the matter...."

He put one leg out of bed. Feeling its feebleness, he reached with his
hand for the additional support of the wall....

       *       *       *       *       *

But before putting out the other leg he stopped and considered, picking
at his new-found beard. He was suddenly wondering whether he _dared_ go
into the kitchen. It was such a frightfully long way; no man knew what
horror might not leap and huddle on his shoulders if he went so far;
when a man has an overmastering impulse to get back into bed he ought to
take heed of the warning and obey it. Besides, why should he go? What
was there to go for? If it was that Bengough creature again, let her look
after herself; Oleron was not going to have things cramp themselves on
his defenceless back for the sake of such a spoilsport as _she_!... If
she was in, let her let herself out again, and the sooner the better for
her! Oleron simply couldn't be bothered. He had his work to do. On the
morrow, he must set about the writing of a novel with a heroine so
winsome, capricious, adorable, jealous, wicked, beautiful, inflaming, and
altogether evil, that men should stand amazed. She was coming over him
now; he knew by the alteration of the very air of the room when she was
near him; and that soft thrill of bliss that had begun to stir in him
never came unless she was beckoning, beckoning....

He let go the wall and fell back into bed again as--oh, unthinkable!--the
other half of that kiss that a gnash had interrupted was placed (how else
convey it?) on his lips, robbing him of very breath....


XII

In the bright June sunlight a crowd filled the square, and looked up at
the windows of the old house with the antique insurance marks in its
walls of red brick and the agents' notice-boards hanging like wooden
choppers over the paling. Two constables stood at the broken gate of the
narrow entrance-alley, keeping folk back. The women kept to the outskirts
of the throng, moving now and then as if to see the drawn red blinds of
the old house from a new angle, and talking in whispers. The children
were in the houses, behind closed doors.

A long-nosed man had a little group about him, and he was telling some
story over and over again; and another man, little and fat and wide-eyed,
sought to capture the long-nosed man's audience with some relation in
which a key figured.

"... and it was revealed to me that there'd been something that very
afternoon," the long-nosed man was saying. "I was standing there, where
Constable Saunders is--or rather, I was passing about my business, when
they came out. There was no deceiving me, oh, no deceiving _me! I_ saw
her face...."

"What was it like, Mr. Barrett?" a man asked.

"It was like hers whom our Lord said to, 'Woman, doth any man accuse
thee?'--white as paper, and no mistake! Don't tell _me_!... And so I
walks straight across to Mrs. Barrett, and 'Jane,' I says, 'this must
stop, and stop at once; we are commanded to avoid evil,' I says, 'and it
must come to an end now; let him get help elsewhere.'

"And she says to me, 'John,' she says, 'it's four-and-sixpence a
week'--them was her words.

"'Jane,' I says, 'if it was forty-six thousand pounds it should
stop'... and from that day to this she hasn't set foot inside that gate."

There was a short silence: then,

"Did Mrs. Barrett ever..._ see_ anythink, like?" somebody vaguely
inquired.

Barrett turned austerely on the speaker.

"What Mrs. Barrett saw and Mrs. Barrett didn't see shall not pass these
lips; even as it is written, keep thy tongue from speaking evil," he
said.

Another man spoke.

"He was pretty near canned up in the _Waggon and Horses_ that night,
weren't he, Jim?"

"Yes, 'e 'adn't 'alf copped it...."

"Not standing treat much, neither; he was in the bar, all on his own...."

"So 'e was; we talked about it...."

The fat, scared-eyed man made another attempt.

"She got the key off of me--she 'ad the number of it--she come into my
shop of a Tuesday evening...."

Nobody heeded him.

"Shut your heads," a heavy labourer commented gruffly, "she hasn't been
found yet. 'Ere's the inspectors; we shall know more in a bit."

Two inspectors had come up and were talking to the constables who guarded
the gate. The little fat man ran eagerly forward, saying that she had
bought the key of him. "I remember the number, because of it's being
three one's and three three's--111333!" he exclaimed excitedly.

An inspector put him aside.

"Nobody's been in?" he asked of one of the constables.

"No, sir."

"Then you, Brackley, come with us; you, Smith, keep the gate. There's a
squad on its way."

The two inspectors and the constable passed down the alley and entered
the house. They mounted the wide carved staircase.

"This don't look as if he'd been out much lately," one of the inspectors
muttered as he kicked aside a litter of dead leaves and paper that lay
outside Oleron's door. "I don't think we need knock--break a pane,
Brackley."

The door had two glazed panels; there was a sound of shattered glass; and
Brackley put his hand through the hole his elbow had made and drew back
the latch.

"Faugh!"... choked one of the inspectors as they entered. "Let some light
and air in, quick. It stinks like a hearse--"

The assembly out in the square saw the red blinds go up and the windows
of the old house flung open.

"That's better," said one of the inspectors, putting his head out of a
window and drawing a deep breath.... "That seems to be the bedroom in
there; will you go in, Simms, while I go over the rest?..."

They had drawn up the bedroom blind also, and the waxy-white, emaciated
man on the bed had made a blinker of his hand against the torturing
flood of brightness. Nor could he believe that his hearing was not
playing tricks with him, for there were two policemen in his room,
bending over him and asking where "she" was. He shook his head.

"This woman Bengough... goes by the name of Miss Elsie Bengough... d'ye
hear? Where is she?... No good, Brackley; get him up; be careful with
him; I'll just shove _my_ head out of the window, I think...."

The other inspector had been through Oleron's study and had found
nothing, and was now in the kitchen, kicking aside an ankle-deep mass of
vegetable refuse that cumbered the floor. The kitchen window had no
blind, and was over-shadowed by the blank end of the house across the
alley. The kitchen appeared to be empty.

But the inspector, kicking aside the dead flowers, noticed that a
shuffling track that was not of his making had been swept to a cupboard
in the corner. In the upper part of the door of the cupboard was a square
panel that looked as if it slid on runners. The door itself was closed.

The inspector advanced, put out his hand to the little knob, and slid the
hatch along its groove.

Then he took an involuntary step back again.

Framed in the aperture, and falling forward a little before it jammed
again in its frame, was something that resembled a large lumpy pudding,
done up in a pudding-bag of faded browny red frieze.

"Ah!" said the inspector.

To close the hatch again he would have had to thrust that pudding back
with his hand; and somehow he did not quite like the idea of touching
it. Instead, he turned the handle of the cupboard itself. There was
weight behind it, so much weight that, after opening the door three or
four inches and peering inside, he had to put his shoulder to it in order
to close it again. In closing it he left sticking out, a few inches from
the floor, a triangle of black and white check skirt.

He went into the small hall.

"All right!" he called.

They had got Oleron into his clothes. He still used his hands as
blinkers, and his brain was very confused. A number of things were
happening that he couldn't understand. He couldn't understand the
extraordinary mess of dead flowers there seemed to be everywhere; he
couldn't understand why there should be police officers in his room; he
couldn't understand why one of these should be sent for a four-wheeler
and a stretcher; and he couldn't understand what heavy article they
seemed to be moving about in the kitchen--his kitchen....

"What's the matter?" he muttered sleepily....

Then he heard a murmur in the square, and the stopping of a four-wheeler
outside. A police officer was at his elbow again, and Oleron wondered
why, when he whispered something to him, he should run off a string of
words--something about "used in evidence against you." They had lifted
him to his feet, and were assisting him towards the door....

No, Oleron couldn't understand it at all.

They got him down the stairs and along the alley. Oleron was aware of
confused angry shoutings; he gathered that a number of people wanted to
lynch somebody or other. Then his attention became fixed on a little fat
frightened-eyed man who appeared to be making a statement that an officer
was taking down in a notebook.

"I'd seen her with him ... they was often together ... she came into my
shop and said it was for him ... I thought it was all right ... 111333
the number was," the man was saying.

The people seemed to be very angry; many police were keeping them back;
but one of the inspectors had a voice that Oleron thought quite kind and
friendly. He was telling somebody to get somebody else into the cab
before something or other was brought out; and Oleron noticed that a
four-wheeler was drawn up at the gate. It appeared that it was himself
who was to be put into it; and as they lifted him up he saw that the
inspector tried to stand between him and something that stood behind the
cab, but was not quick enough to prevent Oleron seeing that this
something was a hooded stretcher. The angry voices sounded like a sea;
something hard, like a stone, hit the back of the cab; and the inspector
followed Oleron in and stood with his back to the window nearer the side
where the people were. The door they had put Oleron in at remained open,
apparently till the other inspector should come; and through the opening
Oleron had a glimpse of the hatchet-like "To Let" boards among the
privet-trees. One of them said that the key was at Number Six....

Suddenly the raging of voices was hushed. Along the entrance-alley
shuffling steps were heard, and the other inspector appeared at the
cab door.

"Right away," he said to the driver.

He entered, fastened the door after him, and blocked up the second window
with his back. Between the two inspectors Oleron slept peacefully. The
cab moved down the square, the other vehicle went up the hill. The
mortuary lay that way.


PHANTAS


     _"For, barring all pother,
      With this, or the other,
Still Britons are Lords of the Main._"


THE CHAPTER OF ADMIRALS


I

As Abel Keeling lay on the galleon's deck, held from rolling down it only
by his own weight and the sun-blackened hand that lay outstretched upon
the planks, his gaze wandered, but ever returned to the bell that hung,
jammed with the dangerous heel-over of the vessel, in the small
ornamental belfry immediately abaft the mainmast. The bell was of cast
bronze, with half-obliterated bosses upon it that had been the heads of
cherubs; but wind and salt spray had given it a thick incrustation of
bright, beautiful, lichenous green. It was this colour that Abel
Keeling's eyes liked.

For wherever else on the galleon his eyes rested they found only
whiteness--the whiteness of extreme eld. There were slightly varying
degrees in her whiteness; here she was of a white that glistened like
salt-granules, there of a greyish chalky white, and again her whiteness
had the yellowish cast of decay; but everywhere it was the mild,
disquieting whiteness of materials out of which the life had departed.
Her cordage was bleached as old straw is bleached, and half her ropes
kept their shape little more firmly than the ash of a string keeps its
shape after the fire has passed; her pallid timbers were white and clean
as bones found in sand; and even the wild frankincense with which (for
lack of tar, at her last touching of land) she had been pitched, had
dried to a pale hard gum that sparkled like quartz in her open seams. The
sun was yet so pale a buckler of silver through the still white mists
that not a cord or timber cast a shadow; and only Abel Keeling's face and
hands were black, carked and cinder-black from exposure to his pitiless
rays.

The galleon was the _Mary of the Tower_, and she had a frightful list to
starboard. So canted was she that her mainyard dipped one of its steel
sickles into the glassy water, and, had her foremast remained, or more
than the broken stump of her bonaventure mizzen, she must have turned
over completely. Many days ago they had stripped the mainyard of its
course, and had passed the sail under the Mary's bottom, in the hope that
it would stop the leak. This it had partly done as long as the galleon
had continued to glide one way; then, without coming about, she had begun
to glide the other, the ropes had parted, and she had dragged the sail
after her, leaving a broad tarnish on the silver sea.

For it was broadside that the galleon glided, almost imperceptibly, ever
sucking down. She glided as if a loadstone drew her, and, at first, Abel
Keeling had thought it was a loadstone, pulling at her iron, drawing her
through the pearly mists that lay like face-cloths to the water and hid
at a short distance the tarnish left by the sail. But later he had known
that it was no loadstone drawing at her iron. The motion was due--must
be due--to the absolute deadness of the calm in that silent, sinister,
three-miles-broad waterway. With the eye of his mind he saw that
loadstone now as he lay against a gun-truck, all but toppling down the
deck. Soon that would happen again which had happened for five days past.
He would hear again the chattering of monkeys and the screaming of
parrots, the mat of green and yellow weeds would creep in towards the
Mary over the quicksilver sea, once more the sheer wall of rock would
rise, and the men would run....

But no; the men would not run this time to drop the fenders. There were
no men left to do so, unless Bligh was still alive. Perhaps Bligh was
still alive. He had walked half-way down the quarter-deck steps a little
before the sudden nightfall of the day before, had then fallen and lain
for a minute (dead, Abel Keeling had supposed, watching him from his
place by the gun-truck), and had then got up again and tottered forward
to the forecastle, his tall figure swaying and his long arms waving. Abel
Keeling had not seen him since. Most likely, he had died in the
forecastle during the night. If he had not been dead he would have come
aft again for water....

At the remembrance of the water Abel Keeling lifted his head. The strands
of lean muscle about his emaciated mouth worked, and he made a little
pressure of his sun-blackened hand on the deck, as if to verify its
steepness and his own balance. The mainmast was some seven or eight yards
away.... He put one stiff leg under him and began, seated as he was, to
make shuffling movements down the slope.

To the mainmast, near the belfry, was affixed his contrivance for
catching water. It consisted of a collar of rope set lower at one side
than at the other (but that had been before the mast had steeved so many
degrees away from the zenith), and tallowed beneath. The mists lingered
later in that gully of a strait than they did on the open ocean, and the
collar of rope served as a collector for the dews that condensed on the
mast. The drops fell into a small earthen pipkin placed on the deck
beneath it.

Abel Keeling reached the pipkin and looked into it. It was nearly a third
full of fresh water. Good. If Bligh, the mate, was dead, so much the more
water for Abel Keeling, master of the _Mary of the Tower_. He dipped two
fingers into the pipkin and put them into his mouth. This he did several
times. He did not dare to raise the pipkin to his black and broken lips
for dread of a remembered agony, he could not have told how many days
ago, when a devil had whispered to him, and he had gulped down the
contents of the pipkin in the morning, and for the rest of the day had
gone waterless.... Again he moistened his fingers and sucked them; then
he lay sprawling against the mast, idly watching the drops of water
as they fell.

It was odd how the drops formed. Slowly they collected at the edge of the
tallowed collar, trembled in their fullness for an instant, and fell,
another beginning the process instantly. It amused Abel Keeling to watch
them. Why (he wondered) were all the drops the same size? What cause and
compulsion did they obey that they never varied, and what frail tenuity
held the little globules intact? It must be due to some Cause.... He
remembered that the aromatic gum of the wild frankincense with which they
had parcelled the seams had hung on the buckets in great sluggish gouts,
obedient to a different compulsion; oil was different again, and so were
juices and balsams. Only quicksilver (perhaps the heavy and motionless
sea put him in mind of quicksilver) seemed obedient to no law.... Why was
it so?

Bligh, of course, would have had his explanation: it was the Hand of God.
That sufficed for Bligh, who had gone forward the evening before, and
whom Abel Keeling now seemed vaguely and as at a distance to remember as
the deep-voiced fanatic who had sung his hymns as, man by man, he had
committed the bodies of the ship's company to the deep. Bligh was that
sort of man; accepted things without question; was content to take things
as they were and be ready with the fenders when the wall of rock rose out
of the opalescent mists. Bligh, too, like the waterdrops, had his Law,
that was his and nobody else's....

There floated down from some rotten rope up aloft a flake of scurf, that
settled in the pipkin. Abel Keeling watched it dully as it settled
towards the pipkin's rim. When presently he again dipped his fingers into
the vessel the water ran into a little vortex, drawing the flake with it.
The water settled again; and again the minute flake determined towards
the rim and adhered there, as if the rim had power to draw it....

It was exactly so that the galleon was gliding towards the wall of rock,
the yellow and green weeds, and the monkeys and parrots. Put out into
mid-water again (while there had been men to put her out) she had glided
to the other wall. One force drew the chip in the pipkin and the ship
over the tranced sea. It was the Hand of God, said Bligh....

Abel Keeling, his mind now noting minute things and now clouded with
torpor, did not at first hear a voice that was quakingly lifted up
over by the forecastle--a voice that drew nearer, to an accompaniment of
swirling water.

_"O Thou, that Jonas in the fish
  Three days didst keep from pain,
Which was a figure of Thy death
  And rising up again--"_

It was Bligh, singing one of his hymns:

_"O Thou, that Noah keptst from flood
  And Abram, day by day,
As he along through Egypt passed
  Didst guide him in the way--"_

The voice ceased, leaving the pious period uncompleted. Bligh was alive,
at any rate.... Abel Keeling resumed his fitful musing.

Yes, that was the Law of Bligh's life, to call things the Hand of God;
but Abel Keeling's Law was different; no better, no worse, only
different. The Hand of God, that drew chips and galleons, must work by
some method; and Abel Keeling's eyes were dully on the pipkin again as if
he sought the method there....

Then conscious thought left him for a space, and when he resumed it was
without obvious connection.

Oars, of course, were the thing. With oars, men could laugh at calms.
Oars, that only pinnaces and galliasses now used, had had their
advantages. But oars (which was to say a method, for you could say if you
liked that the Hand of God grasped the oar-loom, as the Breath of God
filled the sail)--oars were antiquated, belonged to the past, and meant a
throwing-over of all that was good and new and a return to fine lines, a
battle-formation abreast to give effect to the shock of the ram, and a
day or two at sea and then to port again for provisions. Oars ... no.
Abel Keeling was one of the new men, the men who swore by the line-ahead,
the broadside fire of sakers and demi-cannon, and weeks and months
without a landfall. Perhaps one day the wits of such men as he would
devise a craft, not oar-driven (because oars could not penetrate into the
remote seas of the world)--not sail-driven (because men who trusted to
sails found themselves in an airless, three-mile strait, suspended
motionless between cloud and water, ever gliding to a wall of rock)--but
a ship ... a ship ...

"_To Noah and his sons with him
  God spake, and thus said He:
A covenant set I up with you
  And your posterity_--"

It was Bligh again, wandering somewhere in the waist. Abel Keeling's mind
was once more a blank. Then slowly, slowly, as the water drops collected
on the collar of rope, his thought took shape again.

A galliasse? No, not a galliasse. The galliasse made shift to be two
things, and was neither. This ship, that the hand of man should one day
make for the Hand of God to manage, should be a ship that should take and
conserve the force of the wind, take it and store it as she stored her
victuals; at rest when she wished, going ahead when she wished; turning
the forces both of calm and storm against themselves. For, of course, her
force must be wind--stored wind--a bag of the winds, as the children's
tale had it--wind probably directed upon the water astern, driving it
away and urging forward the ship, acting by reaction. She would have a
wind-chamber, into which wind would be pumped with pumps.... Bligh would
call that equally the Hand of God, this driving-force of the ship of the
future that Abel Keeling dimly foreshadowed as he lay between the
mainmast and the belfry, turning his eyes now and then from ashy white
timbers to the vivid green bronze-rust of the bell above him....

Bligh's face, liver-coloured with the sun and ravaged from inwards by the
faith that consumed him, appeared at the head of the quarter-deck steps.
His voice beat uncontrolledly out.

_"And in the earth here is no place
    Of refuge to be found,
Nor in the deep and water-course
    That passeth under ground--"_


II

Bligh's eyes were lidded, as if in contemplation of his inner ecstasy.
His head was thrown back, and his brows worked up and down tormentedly.
His wide mouth remained open as his hymn was suddenly interrupted on the
long-drawn note. From somewhere in the shimmering mists the note was
taken up, and there drummed and rang and reverberated through the strait
a windy, hoarse, and dismal bellow, alarming and sustained. A tremor rang
through Bligh. Moving like a sightless man, he stumbled forward from the
head of the quarter-deck steps, and Abel Keeling was aware of his gaunt
figure behind him, taller for the steepness of the deck. As that vast
empty sound died away, Bligh laughed in his mania.

"Lord, hath the grave's wide mouth a tongue to praise Thee? Lo, again--"

Again the cavernous sound possessed the air, louder and nearer. Through
it came another sound, a slow throb, throb--throb, throb--Again the
sounds ceased.

"Even Leviathan lifteth up his voice in praise!" Bligh sobbed.

Abel Keeling did not raise his head. There had returned to him the memory
of that day when, before the morning mists had lifted from the strait, he
had emptied the pipkin of the water that was the allowance until night
should fall again. During that agony of thirst he had seen shapes and
heard sounds with other than his mortal eyes and ears, and even in the
moments that had alternated with his lightness, when he had known these
to be hallucinations, they had come again. He had heard the bells on a
Sunday in his own Kentish home, the calling of children at play, the
unconcerned singing of men at their daily labour, and the laughter and
gossip of the women as they had spread the linen on the hedge or
distributed bread upon the platters. These voices had rung in his brain,
interrupted now and then by the groans of Bligh and of two other men who
had been alive then. Some of the voices he had heard had been silent on
earth this many a long year, but Abel Keeling, thirst-tortured, had heard
them, even as he was now hearing that vacant moaning with the
intermittent throbbing that filled the strait with alarm....

"Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him!" Bligh was calling deliriously.

Then a bell seemed to sound in Abel Keeling's ears, and, as if something
in the mechanism of his brain had slipped, another picture rose in his
fancy--the scene when the _Mary of the Tower_ had put out, to a bravery
of swinging bells and shrill fifes and valiant trumpets. She had not been
a leper-white galleon then. The scroll-work on her prow had twinkled with
gilding; her belfry and stern-galleries and elaborate lanterns had
flashed in the sun with gold; and her fighting-tops and the war-pavesse
about her waist had been gay with painted coats and scutcheons. To her
sails had been stitched gaudy ramping lions of scarlet saye, and from her
mainyard, now dipping in the water, had hung the broad two-tailed pennant
with the Virgin and Child embroidered upon it....

Then suddenly a voice about him seemed to be saying, "_And a
half-seven--and a half-seven--_" and in a twink the picture in Abel
Keeling's brain changed again. He was at home again, instructing his son,
young Abel, in the casting of the lead from the skiff they had pulled out
of the harbour.

"_And a half-seven!_" the boy seemed to be calling.

Abel Keeling's blackened lips muttered: "Excellently well cast, Abel,
excellently well cast!"

"_And a half-seven--and a half-seven--seven--seven--_"

"Ah," Abel Keeling murmured, "that last was not a clear cast--give me the
line--thus it should go ... ay, so.... Soon you shall sail the seas with
me in the _Mary of the Tower_. You are already perfect in the stars and
the motions of the planets; to-morrow I will instruct you in the use of
the backstaff...."

For a minute or two he continued to mutter; then he dozed. When again he
came to semi-consciousness it was once more to the sound of bells, at
first faint, then louder, and finally becoming a noisy clamour
immediately above his head. It was Bligh. Bligh, in a fresh attack of
delirium, had seized the bell-lanyard and was ringing the bell insanely.
The cord broke in his fingers, but he thrust at the bell with his hand,
and again called aloud.

"Upon an harp and an instrument of ten strings ... let Heaven and Earth
praise Thy Name!..."

He continued to call aloud, and to beat on the bronze-rusted bell.

_"Ship ahoy! What ship's that?"_

One would have said that a veritable hail had come out of the mists; but
Abel Keeling knew those hails that came out of the mists. They came from
ships which were not there. "Ay, ay, keep a good look-out, and have a
care to your lodemanage," he muttered again to his son....

But, as sometimes a sleeper sits up in his dream, or rises from his couch
and walks, so all of a sudden Abel Keeling found himself on his hands and
knees on the deck, looking back over his shoulder. In some deep-seated
region of his consciousness he was dimly aware that the cant of the deck
had become more perilous, but his brain received the intelligence and
forgot it again. He was looking out into the bright and baffling mists.
The buckler of the sun was of a more ardent silver; the sea below it was
lost in brilliant evaporation; and between them, suspended in the haze,
no more substantial than the vague darknesses that float before dazzled
eyes, a pyramidal phantom-shape hung. Abel Keeling passed his hand over
his eyes, but when he removed it the shape was still there, gliding
slowly towards the _Mary's_ quarter. Its form changed as he watched it.
The spirit-grey shape that had been a pyramid seemed to dissolve into
four upright members, slightly graduated in tallness, that nearest the
_Mary's_ stern the tallest and that to the left the lowest. It might have
been the shadow of the gigantic set of reed-pipes on which that vacant
mournful note had been sounded.

And as he looked, with fooled eyes, again his ears became fooled:

_"Ahoy there! What ship's that? Are you a ship?... Here, give me that
trumpet--"_ Then a metallic barking. _"Ahoy there! What the devil are
you? Didn't you ring a bell? Ring it again, or blow a blast or something,
and go dead slow!"_

All this came, as it were, indistinctly, and through a sort of high
singing in Abel Keeling's own ears. Then he fancied a short bewildered
laugh, followed by a colloquy from somewhere between sea and sky.

"Here, Ward, just pinch me, will you? Tell me what you see there. I want
to know if I'm awake."

"See where?"

"There, on the starboard bow. (Stop that ventilating fan; I can't
hear myself think.) See anything? Don't tell me it's that damned
Dutchman--don't pitch me that old Vanderdecken tale--give me an easy
one first, something about a sea-serpent.... You did hear that bell,
didn't you?"

"Shut up a minute--listen--"

Again Bligh's voice was lifted up.

_"This is the cov'nant that I make:
  From henceforth nevermore
Will I again the world destroy
  With water, as before."_

Bligh's voice died away again in Abel Keeling's ears.

"_Oh--my--fat--Aunt--Julia!_" the voice that seemed to come from between
sea and sky sounded again. Then it spoke more loudly. "_I say,_" it began
with careful politeness, "_if you are a ship, do you mind telling us
where the masquerade is to be? Our wireless is out of order, and we
hadn't heard of it.... Oh, you do see it, Ward, don't you?... Please,
please tell us what the hell you are!_"

Again Abel Keeling had moved as a sleepwalker moves. He had raised
himself up by the belfry timbers, and Bligh had sunk in a heap on the
deck. Abel Keeling's movement overturned the pipkin, which raced the
little trickle of its contents down the deck and lodged where the still
and brimming sea made, as it were, a chain with the carved balustrade of
the quarter-deck--one link a still gleaming edge, then a dark baluster,
and then another gleaming link. For one moment only Abel Keeling found
himself noticing that that which had driven Bligh aft had been the
rising of the water in the waist as the galleon settled by the head--the
waist was now entirely submerged; then once more he was absorbed in
his dream, its voices, and its shape in the mist, which had again taken
the form of a pyramid before his eyeballs.

"_Of course_," a voice seemed to be complaining anew, and still through
that confused dinning in Abel Keeling's ears, "_we can't turn a four-inch
on it.... And, of course, Ward, I don't believe in 'em. D'you hear, Ward?
I don't believe in 'em, I say.... Shall we call down to old A. B.? This
might interest His Scientific Skippership...._"

"Oh, lower a boat and pull out to it--into it--over it--through it--"

"Look at our chaps crowded on the barbette yonder. They've seen it.
Better not give an order you know won't be obeyed...."

Abel Keeling, cramped against the antique belfry, had begun to find his
dream interesting. For, though he did not know her build, that mirage was
the shape of a ship. No doubt it was projected from his brooding on ships
of half an hour before; and that was odd.... But perhaps, after all, it
was not very odd. He knew that she did not really exist; only the
appearance of her existed; but things had to exist like that before they
really existed. Before the _Mary of the Tower_ had existed she had been a
shape in some man's imagination; before that, some dreamer had dreamed
the form of a ship with oars; and before that, far away in the dawn and
infancy of the world, some seer had seen in a vision the raft before man
had ventured to push out over the water on his two planks. And since this
shape that rode before Abel Keeling's eyes was a shape in his, Abel
Keeling's dream, he, Abel Keeling, was the master of it. His own brooding
brain had contrived her, and she was launched upon the illimitable ocean
of his own mind....

_"And I will not unmindful be
  Of this, My covenant, passed
Twixt Me and you and every flesh
 Whiles that the world should last,"_

sang Bligh, rapt....

But as a dreamer, even in his dream, will scratch upon the wall by his
couch some key or word to put him in mind of his vision on the morrow
when it has left him, so Abel Keeling found himself seeking some sign to
be a proof to those to whom no vision is vouchsafed. Even Bligh sought
that--could not be silent in his bliss, but lay on the deck there,
uttering great passionate Amens and praising his Maker, as he said, upon
an harp and an instrument of ten strings. So with Abel Keeling. It would
be the Amen of his life to have praised God, not upon a harp, but upon a
ship that should carry her own power, that should store wind or its
equivalent as she stored her victuals, that should be something wrested
from the chaos of uninvention and ordered and disciplined and
subordinated to Abel Keeling's will.... And there she was, that
ship-shaped thing of spirit-grey, with the four pipes that resembled a
phantom organ now broadside and of equal length. And the ghost-crew
of that ship were speaking again....

The interrupted silver chain by the quarterdeck balustrade had now become
continuous, and the balusters made a herring-bone over their own
motionless reflections. The spilt water from the pipkin had dried, and
the pipkin was not to be seen. Abel Keeling stood beside the mast, erect
as God made man to go. With his leathery hand he smote upon the bell. He
waited for the space of a minute, and then cried:

"Ahoy!... Ship ahoy!... What ship's that?"


III

We are not conscious in a dream that we are playing a game the beginning
and end of which are in ourselves. In this dream of Abel Keeling's a
voice replied:

"_Hallo, it's found its tongue.... Ahoy there! What are you?_"

Loudly and in a clear voice Abel Keeling called: "Are you a ship?"

With a nervous giggle the answer came:

"_We are a ship, aren't we, Ward? I hardly feel sure.... Yes, of course,
we're a ship. No question about us. The question is what the dickens
you are._"

Not all the words these voices used were intelligible to Abel Keeling,
and he knew not what it was in the tone of these last words that reminded
him of the honour due to the _Mary of the Tower_. Blister-white and at
the end of her life as she was, Abel Keeling was still jealous of her
dignity; the voice had a youngish ring; and it was not fitting that young
chins should be wagged about his galleon. He spoke curtly.

"You that spoke--are you the master of that ship?"

"_Officer of the watch_," the words floated back; "_the captain's
below_."

"Then send for him. It is with masters that masters hold speech," Abel
Keeling replied.

He could see the two shapes, flat and without relief, standing on a high
narrow structure with rails. One of them gave a low whistle, and seemed
to be fanning his face; but the other rumbled something into a sort of
funnel. Presently the two shapes became three. There was a murmuring,
as of a consultation, and then suddenly a new voice spoke. At its thrill
and tone a sudden tremor ran through Abel Keeling's frame. He wondered
what response it was that that voice found in the forgotten recesses of
his memory....

"_Ahoy!_" seemed to call this new yet faintly remembered voice. "_What's
all this about? Listen. We're His Majesty's destroyer_ Seapink, _out of
Devonport last October, and nothing particular the matter with us. Now
who are you?_"

"The _Mary of the Tower_, out of the Port of Rye on the day of Saint
Anne, and only two men--"

A gasp interrupted him.

"_Out of_ WHERE?" that voice that so strangely moved Abel Keeling said
unsteadily, while Bligh broke into groans of renewed rapture.

"Out of the Port of Rye, in the County of Sussex ... nay, give ear, else
I cannot make you hear me while this man's spirit and flesh wrestle so
together!... Ahoy! Are you gone?" For the voices had become a low murmur,
and the ship-shape had faded before Abel Keeling's eyes. Again and again
he called. He wished to be informed of the disposition and economy of the
wind-chamber....

"The wind-chamber!" he called, in an agony lest the knowledge
almost within his grasp should be lost. "I would know about the
wind-chamber...."

Like an echo, there came back the words, uncomprehendingly uttered, "_The
wind-chamber_?..."

"... that driveth the vessel--perchance 'tis not wind--a steel bow that
is bent also conserveth force--the force you store, to move at will
through calm and storm...."

"Can you make out what it's driving at?"

"Oh, we shall all wake up in a minute...."

"Quiet, I have it; the engines; it wants to know about our engines.
It'll be wanting to see our papers presently. Rye Port!... Well, no harm
in humouring it; let's see what it can make of this. Ahoy there!" came
the voice to Abel Keeling, a little more strongly, as if a shifting wind
carried it, and speaking faster and faster as it went on. "Not wind, but
steam; d'you hear? Steam, steam. Steam, in eight Yarrow water-tube
boilers. S-t-e-a-m, steam. Got it? And we've twin-screw triple expansion
engines, indicated horse-power four thousand, and we can do 430
revolutions per minute; savvy? Is there anything your phantomhood would
like to know about our armament?..."

Abel Keeling was muttering fretfully to himself. It annoyed him that
words in his own vision should have no meaning for him. How did words
come to him in a dream that he had no knowledge of when wide awake? The
_Seapink_--that was the name of this ship; but a pink was long and
narrow, low-carged and square-built aft....

"_And as for our armament,_" the voice with the tones that so profoundly
troubled Abel Keeling's memory continued, "_we've two revolving Whitehead
torpedo-tubes, three six-pounders on the upper deck, and that's a
twelve-pounder forward there by the conning-tower. I forgot to mention
that we're nickel steel, with a coal capacity of sixty tons in most
damnably placed bunkers, and that thirty and a quarter knots is about our
top. Care to come aboard?_"

But the voice was speaking still more rapidly and feverishly, as if to
fill a silence with no matter what, and the shape that was uttering it
was straining forward anxiously over the rail.

"_Ugh! But I'm glad this happened in the daylight,_" another voice was
muttering.

"I wish I was sure it was happening at all.... Poor old spook!"

"I suppose it would keep its feet if her deck was quite vertical. Think
she'll go down, or just melt?"

"Kind of go down ... without wash...."

"Listen--here's the other one now--"

For Bligh was singing again:

"For, Lord, Thou know'st our nature such
  If we great things obtain,
And in the getting of the same
  Do feel no grief or pain,

"We little do esteem thereof;
  But, hardly brought to pass,
A thousand times we do esteem
  More than the other was."

_"But oh, look--look--look at the other!... Oh, I say, wasn't he a grand
old boy! Look!"_

For, transfiguring Abel Reeling's form as a prophet's form is
transfigured in the instant of his rapture, flooding his brain with the
white eureka-light of perfect knowledge, that for which he and his dream
had been at a standstill had come. He knew her, this ship of the future,
as if God's Finger had bitten her lines into his brain. He knew her as
those already sinking into the grave know things, miraculously,
completely, accepting Life's impossibilities with a nodded "Of course."
From the ardent mouths of her eight furnaces to the last drip from her
lubricators, from her bed-plates to the breeches of her quick-firers, he
knew her--read her gauges, thumbed her bearings, gave the ranges from her
range-finders, and lived the life he lived who was in command of her. And
he would not forget on the morrow, as he had forgotten on many morrows,
for at last he had seen the water about his feet, and knew that there
would be no morrow for him in this world....

And even in that moment, with but a sand or two to run in his glass,
indomitable, insatiable, dreaming dream on dream, he could not die until
he knew more. He had two questions to ask, and a master-question; and but
a moment remained. Sharply his voice rang out.

"Ho, there!... This ancient ship, the _Mary of the Tower_, cannot steam
thirty and a quarter knots, but yet she can sail the waters. What
more does your ship? Can she soar above them, as the fowls of the air
soar?"

"_Lord, he thinks we're an aeroplane!... No, she can't...._"

"And can you dive, even as the fishes of the deep?"

"_No.... Those are submarines ... we aren't a submarine...._"

But Abel Keeling waited for no more. He gave an exulting chuckle.

"Oho, oho--thirty knots, and but on the face of the waters--no more than
that? Oho!... Now _my_ ship, the ship I see as a mother sees full-grown
the child she has but conceived--_my_ ship, I say--oho!--_my_ ship
shall.... Below there--trip that gun!"

The cry came suddenly and alertly, as a muffled sound came from below and
an ominous tremor shook the galleon.

"_By Jove, her guns are breaking loose below--that's her finish_--"

"Trip that gun, and double-breech the others!" Abel Keeling's voice rang
out, as if there had been any to obey him. He had braced himself within
the belfry frame; and then in the middle of the next order his voice
suddenly failed him. His ship-shape, that for the moment he had
forgotten, rode once more before his eyes. This was the end, and his
master-question, apprehension for the answer to which was now torturing
his face and well-nigh bursting his heart, was still unasked.

"Ho--he that spoke with me--the master," he cried in a voice that ran
high, "is he there?"

"_Yes, yes!_" came the other voice across the water, sick with suspense.
"_Oh, be quick!_"

There was a moment in which hoarse cries from many voices, a heavy thud
and rumble on wood, and a crash of timbers and a gurgle and a splash were
indescribably mingled; the gun under which Abel Keeling had lain had
snapped her rotten breechings and plunged down the deck, carrying Bligh's
unconscious form with it. The deck came up vertical, and for one instant
longer Abel Keeling clung to the belfry.

"I cannot see your face," he screamed, "but meseems your voice is a voice
I know. _What is your name_?"

In a torn sob the answer came across the water:

"_Keeling--Abel Keeling.... Oh, my God!_"

And Abel Keeling's cry of triumph, that mounted to a victorious "Huzza!"
was lost in the downward plunge of the _Mary of the Tower_, that left
the strait empty save for the sun's fiery blaze and the last smoke-like
evaporation of the mists.


ROOUM


For all I ever knew to the contrary, it was his own name; and something
about him, name or man or both, always put me in mind, I can't tell you
how, of negroes. As regards the name, I dare say it was something
huggermugger in the mere sound--something that I classed, for no
particular reason, with the dark and ignorant sort of words, such as
"Obi" and "Hoodoo." I only know that after I learned that his name was
Rooum, I couldn't for the life of me have thought of him as being called
anything else.

The first impression that you got of his head was that it was a patchwork
of black and white--black bushy hair and short white beard, or else the
other way about. As a matter of fact, both hair and beard were piebald,
so that if you saw him in the gloom a dim patch of white showed down one
side of his head, and dark tufts cropped up here and there in his beard.
His eyebrows alone were entirely black, with a little sprouting of hair
almost joining them. And perhaps his skin helped to make me think of
negroes, for it was very dark, of the dark brown that always seems to
have more than a hint of green behind it. His forehead was low, and
scored across with deep horizontal furrows.

We never knew when he was going to turn up on a job. We might not have
seen him for weeks, but his face was always as likely as not to appear
over the edge of a crane-platform just when that marvellous mechanical
intuition of his was badly needed. He wasn't certificated. He wasn't even
trained, as the rest of us understood training; and he scoffed at the
drawing-office, and laughed outright at logarithms and our laborious
methods of getting out quantities. But he could set sheers and tackle in
a way that made the rest of us look silly. I remember once how, through
the parting of a chain, a sixty-foot girder had come down and lay under
a ruck of other stuff, as the bottom chip lies under a pile of
spellikins--a hopeless-looking smash. Myself, I'm certificated twice or
three times over; but I can only assure you that I wanted to kick myself
when, after I'd spent a day and a sleepless night over the job, I saw the
game of tit-tat-toe that Rooum made of it in an hour or two. Certificated
or not, a man isn't a fool who can do that sort of thing. And he was
one of these fellows, too, who can "find water"--tell you where water is
and what amount of getting it is likely to take, by just walking over the
place. We aren't certificated up to that yet.

He was offered good money to stick to us--to stick to our firm--but he
always shook his black-and-white piebald head. He'd never be able to keep
the bargain if he were to make it, he told us quite fairly. I know there
are these chaps who can't endure to be clocked to their work with a
patent time-clock in the morning and released of an evening with a
whistle--and it's one of the things no master can ever understand. So
Rooum came and went erratically, showing up maybe in Leeds or Liverpool,
perhaps next on Plymouth breakwater, and once he turned up in an
out-of-the-way place in Glamorganshire just when I was wondering what had
become of him.

The way I got to know him (got to know him, I mean, more than just to
nod) was that he tacked himself on to me one night down Vauxhall way,
where we were setting up some small plant or other. We had knocked off
for the day, and I was walking in the direction of the bridge when he
came up. We walked along together; and we had not gone far before it
appeared that his reason for joining me was that he wanted to know "what
a molecule was."

I stared at him a bit.

"What do you want to know that for?" I said. "What does a chap like you,
who can do it all backwards, want with molecules?"

Oh, he just wanted to know, he said.

So, on the way across the bridge, I gave it him more or less from the
book--molecular theory and all the rest of it. But, from the childish
questions he put, it was plain that he hadn't got the hang of it at all.
"Did the molecular theory allow things to pass through one another?" he
wanted to know; "_Could_ things pass through one another?" and a lot of
ridiculous things like that. I gave it up.

"You're a genius in your own way, Rooum," I said finally; "you know these
things without the books we plodders have to depend on. If I'd luck like
that, I think I should be content with it."

But he didn't seem satisfied, though he dropped the matter for that time.
But I had his acquaintance, which was more than most of us had. He
asked me, rather timidly, if I'd lend him a book or two. I did so, but
they didn't seem to contain what he wanted to know, and he soon returned
them, without remark.

Now you'd expect a fellow to be specially sensitive, one way or another,
who can tell when there's water a hundred feet beneath him; and as you
know, the big men are squabbling yet about this water-finding business.
But, somehow, the water-finding puzzled me less than it did that Rooum
should be extraordinarily sensitive to something far commoner and easier
to understand--ordinary echoes. He couldn't stand echoes. He'd go a
mile round rather than pass a place that he knew had an echo; and if he
came on one by chance, sometimes he'd hurry through as quick as he
could, and sometimes he'd loiter and listen very intently. I rather joked
about this at first, till I found it really distressed him; then, of
course, I pretended not to notice. We're all cranky somewhere, and for
that matter, I can't touch a spider myself.

For the remarkable thing that overtook Rooum--(that, by the way, is an
odd way to put it, as you'll see presently; but the words came that
way into my head, so let them stand)--for the remarkable thing that
overtook Rooum, I don't think I can begin better than with the first
time, or very soon after the first time, that I noticed this peculiarity
about the echoes.

It was early on a particularly dismal November evening, and this time we
were somewhere out south-east London way, just beyond what they are
pleased to call the building-line--you know these districts of wretched
trees and grimy fields and market-gardens that are about the same to real
country that a slum is to a town. It rained that night; rain was the most
appropriate weather for the brickfields and sewage-farms and yards of old
carts and railway-sleepers we were passing. The rain shone on the black
hand-bag that Rooum always carried; and I sucked at the dottle of a pipe
that it was too much trouble to fill and light again. We were walking in
the direction of Lewisham (I think it would be), and were still a little
way from that eruption of red-brick houses that ... but you've doubtless
seen them.

You know how, when they're laying out new roads, they lay down the
narrow strip of kerb first, with neither setts on the one hand nor
flagstones on the other? We had come upon one of these. (I had noticed
how, as we had come a few minutes before under a tall hollow-ringing
railway arch, Rooum had all at once stopped talking--it was the echo, of
course, that bothered him.) The unmade road to which we had come had
headless lamp-standards at intervals, and ramparts of grey road-metal
ready for use; and save for the strip of kerb, it was a broth of mud
and stiff clay. A red light or two showed where the road-barriers
were--they were laying the mains; a green railway light showed on an
embankment; and the Lewisham lamps made a rusty glare through the rain.
Rooum went first, walking along the narrow strip of kerb.

The lamp-standards were a little difficult to see, and when I heard Rooum
stop suddenly and draw in his breath sharply, I thought he had walked
into one of them.

"Hurt yourself?" I said.

He walked on without replying; but half a dozen yards farther on he
stopped again. He was listening again. He waited for me to come up.

"I say," he said, in an odd sort of voice, "go a yard or two ahead, will
you?"

"What's the matter?" I asked, as I passed ahead. He didn't answer.

Well, I hadn't been leading for more than a minute before he wanted to
change again. He was breathing very quick and short.

"Why, what ails you?" I demanded, stopping.

"It's all right.... You're not playing any tricks, are you?..."

I saw him pass his hand over his brow.

"Come, get on," I said shortly; and we didn't speak again till we struck
the pavement with the lighted lamps. Then I happened to glance at him.

"Here," I said brusquely, taking him by the sleeve, "you're not well.
We'll call somewhere and get a drink."

"Yes," he said, again wiping his brow. "I say ... did you hear?"

"Hear what?"

"Ah, you didn't ... and, of course, you didn't feel anything...."

"Come, you're shaking."

When presently we came to a brightly lighted public-house or hotel, I saw
that he was shaking even worse than I had thought. The shirt-sleeved
barman noticed it too, and watched us curiously. I made Rooum sit down,
and got him some brandy.

"What was the matter?" I asked, as I held the glass to his lips.

But I could get nothing out of him except that it was "All right--all
right," with his head twitching over his shoulder almost as if he had
touch of the dance. He began to come round a little. He wasn't the kind
of man you'd press for explanations, and presently we set out again.
He walked with me as far as my lodgings, refused to come in, but for all
that lingered at the gate as if loath to leave. I watched him turn the
corner in the rain.

We came home together again the next evening, but by a different way,
quite half a mile longer. He had waited for me a little pertinaciously.
It seemed he wanted to talk about molecules again.

Well, when a man of his age--he'd be near fifty--begins to ask questions,
he's rather worse than a child who wants to know where Heaven is or some
such thing--for you can't put him off as you can the child. Somewhere or
other he'd picked up the word "osmosis," and seemed to have some
glimmering of its meaning. He dropped the molecules, and began to ask me
about osmosis.

"It means, doesn't it," he demanded, "that liquids will work their way
into one another--through a bladder or something? Say a thick fluid and a
thin: you'll find some of the thick in the thin, and the thin in the
thick?"

"Yes. The thick into the thin is ex-osmosis, and the other end-osmosis.
That takes place more quickly. But I don't know a deal about it."

"Does it ever take place with solids?" he next asked.

What was he driving at? I thought; but replied: "I believe that what is
commonly called 'adhesion' is something of the sort, under another name."

"A good deal of this bookwork seems to be finding a dozen names for the
same thing," he grunted; and continued to ask his questions.

But what it was he really wanted to know I couldn't for the life of me
make out.

Well, he was due any time now to disappear again, having worked quite six
weeks in one place; and he disappeared. He disappeared for a good many
weeks. I think it would be about February before I saw or heard of him
again.

It was February weather, anyway, and in an echoing enough place that I
found him--the subway of one of the Metropolitan stations. He'd probably
forgotten the echoes when he'd taken the train; but, of course, the
railway folk won't let a man who happens to dislike echoes go wandering
across the metals where he likes.

He was twenty yards ahead when I saw him. I recognised him by his patched
head and black hand-bag. I ran along the subway after him.

It was very curious. He'd been walking close to the white-tiled wall,
and I saw him suddenly stop; but he didn't turn. He didn't even turn
when I pulled up, close behind him; he put out one hand to the wall, as
if to steady himself. But, the moment I touched his shoulder, he just
dropped--just dropped, half on his knees against the white tiling. The
face he turned round and up to me was transfixed with fright.

There were half a hundred people about--a train was just in--and it isn't
a difficult matter in London to get a crowd for much less than a man
crouching terrified against a wall, looking over his shoulder as Rooum
looked, at another man almost as terrified. I felt somebody's hand on
my own arm. Evidently somebody thought I'd knocked Rooum down.

The terror went slowly from his face. He stumbled to his feet. I shook
myself free of the man who held me and stepped up to Rooum.

"What the devil's all this about?" I demanded, roughly enough.

"It's all right ... it's all right,..." he stammered.

"Heavens, man, you shouldn't play tricks like that!"

"No ... no ... but for the love of God don't do it again!..."

"We'll not explain here," I said, still in a good deal of a huff; and
the small crowd melted away--disappointed, I dare say, that it wasn't
a fight.

"Now," I said, when we were outside in the crowded street, "you might let
me know what all this is about, and what it is that for the love of
God I'm not to do again."

He was half apologetic, but at the same time half blustering, as if I had
committed some sort of an outrage.

"A senseless thing like that!" he mumbled to himself. "But there: you
didn't know.... You _don't_ know, do you?... I tell you, d'you hear,
_you're not to run at all when I'm about_! You're a nice fellow and all
that, and get your quantities somewhere near right, if you do go a long
way round to do it--but I'll not answer for myself if you run, d'you
hear?... Putting your hand on a man's shoulder like that, just when ..."

"Certainly I might have spoken," I agreed, a little stiffly.

"Of course, you ought to have spoken! Just you see you don't do it again.
It's monstrous!"

I put a curt question.

"Are you sure you're quite right in your head, Rooum?"

"Ah," he cried, "don't you think I just fancy it, my lad! Nothing so
easy! I thought you guessed that other time, on the new road ... it's as
plain as a pikestaff... no, no, no! _I_ shall be telling _you_ something
about molecules one of these days!"

We walked for a time in silence.

Suddenly he asked: "What are you doing now?"

"I myself, do you mean? Oh, the firm. A railway job, past Pinner.
But we've a big contract coming on in the West End soon they might
want you for. They call it 'alterations,' but it's one of these big
shop-rebuildings."

"I'll come along."

"Oh, it isn't for a month or two yet."

"I don't mean that. I mean I'll come along to Pinner with you now,
to-night, or whenever you go."

"Oh!" I said.

I don't know that I specially wanted him. It's a little wearing, the
company of a chap like that. You never know what he's going to let you in
for next. But, as this didn't seem to occur to him, I didn't say
anything. If he really liked catching the last train down, a three-mile
walk, and then sharing a double-bedded room at a poor sort of alehouse
(which was my own programme), he was welcome. We walked a little farther;
then I told him the time of the train and left him.

He turned up at Euston, a little after twelve. We went down together. It
was getting on for one when we left the station at the other end, and
then we began the tramp across the Weald to the inn. A little to my
surprise (for I had begun to expect unaccountable behaviour from him) we
reached the inn without Rooum having dodged about changing places with
me, or having fallen cowering under a gorse-bush, or anything of
that kind. Our talk, too, was about work, not molecules and osmosis.

The inn was only a roadside beerhouse--I have forgotten its name--and all
its sleeping accomodation was the one double-bedded room. Over the head
of my own bed the ceiling was cut away, following the roof-line; and the
wallpaper was perfectly shocking--faded bouquets that made V's and A's,
interlacing everywhere. The other bed was made up, and lay across the
room.

I think I only spoke once while we were making ready for bed, and that
was when Rooum took from his black hand-bag a brush and a torn nightgown.

"That's what you always carry about, is it?" I remarked; and Rooum
grunted something: Yes ... never knew where you'd be next ... no harm,
was it? We tumbled into bed.

But, for all the lateness of the hour, I wasn't sleepy; so from my own
bag I took a book, set the candle on the end of the mantel, and began
to read. Mark you, I don't say I was much better informed for the reading
I did, for I was watching the V's on the wallpaper mostly--that, and
wondering what was wrong with the man in the other bed who had fallen
down at a touch in the subway. He was already asleep.

Now I don't know whether I can make the next clear to you. I'm quite
certain he was sound asleep, so that it wasn't just the fact that he
spoke. Even that is a little unpleasant, I always think, any sort of
sleep-talking; but it's a very queer sort of sensation when a man
actually answers a question that's put to him, knowing nothing whatever
about it in the morning. Perhaps I ought not to have put that question;
having put it, I did the next best thing afterwards, as you'll see in a
moment ... but let me tell you.

He'd been asleep perhaps an hour, and I woolgathering about the
wallpaper, when suddenly, in a far more clear and loud voice than he ever
used when awake, he said:

_"What the devil is it prevents me seeing him, then?"_

That startled me, rather, for the second time that evening; and I really
think I had spoken before I had fully realised what was happening.

"From seeing whom?" I said, sitting up in bed.

"Whom?... You're not attending. The fellow I'm telling you about, who
runs after me," he answered--answered perfectly plainly.

I could see his head there on the pillow, black and white, and his
eyes were closed. He made a slight movement with his arm, but that did
not wake him. Then it came to me, with a sort of start, what was
happening. I slipped half out of bed. Would he--would he?--answer
another question?... I risked it, breathlessly:

"Have you any idea who he is?"

Well, that too he answered.

"Who he is? The Runner?... Don't be silly. _Who else should it be?_"

With every nerve in me tingling, I tried again.

"What happens, then, when he catches you?"

This time, I really don't know whether his words were an answer or not;
they were these:

"To hear him catching you up ... and then padding away ahead again! All
right, all right ... but I guess it's weakening him a bit, too...."

Without noticing it, I had got out of bed, and had advanced quite to the
middle of the floor.

"What did you say his name was?" I breathed.

But that was a dead failure. He muttered brokenly for a moment, gave a
deep troubled sigh, and then began to snore loudly and regularly.

I made my way back to bed; but I assure you that before I did so I filled
my basin with water, dipped my face into it, and then set the candlestick
afloat in it, leaving the candle burning. I thought I'd like to have a
light.... It had burned down by morning. Rooum, I remember, remarked on
the silly practice of reading in bed.

Well, it was a pretty kind of obsession for a man to have, wasn't it?
Somebody running after him all the time, and then ... running on ahead?
And, of course, on a broad pavement there would be plenty of room for
this running gentleman to run round; but on an eight- or nine-inch kerb,
such as that of the new road out Lewisham way ... but perhaps he was a
jumping gentleman too, and could jump over a man's head. You'd think he'd
have to get past some way, wouldn't you?... I remember vaguely wondering
whether the name of that Runner was not Conscience; but Conscience isn't
a matter of molecules and osmosis....

One thing, however, was clear; I'd got to tell Rooum what I'd learned:
for you can't get hold of a fellow's secrets in ways like that. I lost
no time about it. I told him, in fact, soon after we'd left the inn the
next morning--told him how he'd answered in his sleep.

And--what do you think of this?--he seemed to think I ought to have
guessed it! _Guessed_ a monstrous thing like that!

"You're less clever than I thought, with your books and that, if you
didn't," he grunted.

"But ... Good God, man!"

"Queer, isn't it? But you don't know the queerest ..."

He pondered for a moment, and then suddenly put his lips to my ear.

"I'll tell you," he whispered. "_It gets harder every time_!... At first,
he just slipped through: a bit of a catch at my heart, like when you nod
off to sleep in a chair and jerk up awake again; and away he went. But
now it's getting grinding, sluggish; and the pain.... You'd notice, that
night on the road, the little check it gave me; that's past long since;
and last night, when I'd just braced myself up stiff to meet it, and you
tapped me on the shoulder ..." He passed the back of his hand over his
brow.

"I tell you," he continued, "it's an agony each time. I could scream at
the thought of it. It's oftener, too, now, and he's getting stronger. The
end-osmosis is getting to be ex-osmosis--is that right? Just let me tell
you one more thing--"

But I'd had enough. I'd asked questions the night before, but now--well,
I knew quite as much as, and more than, I wanted.

"Stop, please," I said. "You're either off your head, or worse. Let's
call it the first. Don't tell me any more, please."

"Frightened, what? Well, I don't blame you. But what would _you_ do?"

"I should see a doctor; I'm only an engineer," I replied.

"Doctors?... Bah!" he said, and spat.

I hope you see how the matter stood with Rooum. What do you make of it?
Could you have believed it--_do_ you believe it?... He'd made a nearish
guess when he'd said that much of our knowledge is giving names to things
we know nothing about; only rule-of-thumb Physics thinks everything's
explained in the Manual; and you've always got to remember one thing:
You can call it Force or what you like, but it's a certainty that things,
solid things of wood and iron and stone, would explode, just go off in a
puff into space, if it wasn't for something just as inexplicable as that
that Rooum said he felt in his own person. And if you can swallow that,
it's a relatively small matter whether Rooum's light-footed Familiar
slipped through him unperceived, or had to struggle through obstinately.
You see now why I said that "a queer thing overtook Rooum."

More: I saw it. This thing, that outrages reason--I saw it happen. That
is to say, I saw its effects, and it was in broad daylight, on an
ordinary afternoon, in the middle of Oxford Street, of all places. There
wasn't a shadow of doubt about it. People were pressing and jostling
about him, and suddenly I saw him turn his head and listen, as I'd seen
him before. I tell you, an icy creeping ran all over my skin. I fancied I
felt it approaching too, nearer and nearer.... The next moment he had
made a sort of gathering of himself, as if against a gust. He stumbled
and thrust--thrust with his body. He swayed, physically, as a tree sways
in a wind; he clutched my arm and gave a loud scream. Then, after
seconds--minutes--I don't know how long--he was free again.

And for the colour of his face when by-and-by I glanced at it ... well, I
once saw a swarthy Italian fall under a sunstroke, and _his_ face was
much the same colour that Rooum's negro face had gone; a cloudy, whitish
green.

"Well--you've seen it--what do you think of it?" he gasped presently,
turning a ghastly grin on me.

But it was night before the full horror of it had soaked into me.

Soon after that he disappeared again. I wasn't sorry.

       *       *       *       *       *

Our big contract in the West End came on. It was a time-contract, with
all manner of penalty clauses if we didn't get through; and I assure
you that we were busy. I myself was far too busy to think of Rooum.

It's a shop now, the place we were working at, or rather one of these
huge weldings of fifty shops where you can buy anything; and if you'd
seen us there... but perhaps you did see us, for people stood up on the
tops of omnibuses as they passed, to look over the mud-splashed hoarding
into the great excavation we'd made. It was a sight. Staging rose on
staging, tier on tier, with interminable ladders all over the steel
structure. Three or four squat Otis lifts crouched like iron turtles on
top, and a lattice-crane on a towering three-cornered platform rose a
hundred and twenty feet into the air. At one end of the vast quarry
was a demolished house, showing flues and fireplaces and a score of
thicknesses of old wallpaper; and at night--they might well have stood up
on the tops of the buses! A dozen great spluttering violet arc-lights
half-blinded you; down below were the watchmen's fires; overhead, the
riveters had their fire-baskets; and in odd corners naphtha-lights
guttered and flared. And the steel rang with the riveters' hammers, and
the crane-chains rattled and clashed.... There's not much doubt in _my_
mind, it's the engineers who are the architects nowadays. The chaps who
think they're the architects are only a sort of paperhangers, who hang
brick and terra-cotta on our work and clap a pinnacle or two on top--but
never mind that. There we were, sweating and clanging and navvying, till
the day shift came to relieve us.

And I ought to say that fifty feet above our great gap, and from end to
end across it, there ran a travelling crane on a skeleton line, with
platform, engine, and wooden cab all compact in one.

It happened that they had pitched in as one of the foremen some fellow or
other, a friend of the firm's, a rank duffer, who pestered me incessantly
with his questions. I did half his work and all my own, and it hadn't
improved my temper much. On this night that I'm telling about, he'd been
playing the fool with his questions as if a time-contract was a sort of
summer holiday; and he'd filled me up to that point that I really can't
say just when it was that Rooum put in an appearance again. I think I had
heard somebody mention his name, but I'd paid no attention.

Well, our Johnnie Fresh came up to me for the twentieth time that night,
this time wanting to know something about the overhead crane. At that
I fairly lost my temper.

"What ails the crane?" I cried. "It's doing its work, isn't it? Isn't
everybody doing their work except you? Why can't you ask Hopkins? Isn't
Hopkins there?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Then," I snapped, "in that particular I'm as ignorant as you, and I hope
it's the only one."

But he grabbed my arm.

"Look at it now!" he cried, pointing; and I looked up.

Either Hopkins or somebody was dangerously exceeding the speed-limit. The
thing was flying along its thirty yards of rail as fast as a tram, and
the heavy fall-blocks swung like a ponderous kite-tail, thirty feet
below. As I watched, the engine brought up within a yard of the end of
the way, the blocks crashed like a ram into the broken house end,
fetching down plaster and brick, and then the mechanism was reversed. The
crane set off at a tear back.

"Who in Hell ..." I began; but it wasn't a time to talk. "_Hi!_" I
yelled, and made a spring for a ladder.

The others had noticed it, too, for there were shouts all over the place.
By that time I was halfway up the second stage. Again the crane tore
past, with the massive tackle sweeping behind it, and again I heard the
crash at the other end. Whoever had the handling of it was managing
it skilfully, for there was barely a foot to spare when it turned again.

On the fourth platform, at the end of the way, I found Hopkins. He was
white, and seemed to be counting on his fingers.

"What's the matter here?" I cried.

"It's Rooum," he answered. "I hadn't stepped out of the cab, not a
minute, when I heard the lever go. He's running somebody down, he says;
he'll run the whole shoot down in a minute--look!..."

The crane was coming back again. Half out of the cab I could see Rooum's
mottled hair and beard. His brow was ribbed like a gridiron, and as he
ripped past one of the arcs his face shone like porcelain with the sweat
that bathed it.

"Now ... you!... Now, damn you!..." he was shouting.

"Get ready to board him when he reverses!" I shouted to Hopkins.

Just how we scrambled on I don't know. I got one arm over the
lifting-gear (which, of course, wasn't going), and heard Hopkins on
the other footplate. Rooum put the brakes down and reversed; again came
the thud of the fall-blocks; and we were speeding back again over the
gulf of misty orange light. The stagings were thronged with gaping men.

"Ready? Now!" I cried to Hopkins; and we sprang into the cab.

Hopkins hit Rooum's wrist with a spanner. Then he seized the lever,
jammed the brake down and tripped Rooum, all, as it seemed, in one
movement. I fell on top of Rooum. The crane came to a standstill
half-way down the line. I held Rooum panting.

But either Rooum was stronger than I, or else he took me very much
unawares. All at once he twisted clear from my grasp and stumbled on his
knees to the rear door of the cab. He threw up one elbow, and staggered
to his feet as I made another clutch at him.

"Keep still, you fool!" I bawled. "Hit him over the head, Hopkins!"

Rooum screamed in a high voice.

"Run him down--cut him up with the wheels--down, you!--down, I say!--Oh,
my God!... _Ha_!"

He sprang clear out from the crane door, well-nigh taking me with him.

I told you it was a skeleton line, two rails and a tie or two. He'd
actually jumped to the right-hand rail. And he was running along
it--running along that iron tightrope, out over that well of light and
watching men. Hopkins had started the travelling-gear, as if with some
insane idea of catching him; but there was only one possible end to it.
He'd gone fully a dozen yards, while I watched, horribly fascinated; and
then I saw the turn of his head....

He didn't meet it this time; he sprang to the other rail, as if to evade
it....

Even at the take-off he missed. As far as I could see, he made no attempt
to save himself with his hands. He just went down out of the field of
my vision. There was an awful silence; then, from far below ...

       *       *       *       *       *

They weren't the men on the lower stages who moved first. The men above
went a little way down, and then they too stopped. Presently two of them
descended, but by a distant way. They returned, with two bottles of
brandy, and there was a hasty consultation. Two men drank the brandy off
there and then--getting on for a pint of brandy apiece; then they went
down, drunk.

I, Hopkins tells me, had got down on my knees in the crane cab, and was
jabbering away cheerfully to myself. When I asked him what I said,
he hesitated, and then said: "Oh, you don't want to know that, sir," and
I haven't asked him since.

What do _you_ make of it?


BENLIAN


I

It would be different if you had known Benlian. It would be different if
you had had even that glimpse of him that I had the very first time I saw
him, standing on the little wooden landing at the top of the flight of
steps outside my studio door. I say "studio"; but really it was just a
sort of loft looking out over the timber-yard, and I used it as a studio.
The real studio, the big one, was at the other end of the yard, and that
was Benlian's.

Scarcely anybody ever came there. I wondered many a time if the
timber-merchant was dead or had lost his memory and forgotten all about
his business; for his stacks of floorboards, set criss-crosswise to
season (you know how they pile them up) were grimy with soot, and nobody
ever disturbed the rows of scaffold-poles that stood like palisades along
the walls. The entrance was from the street, through a door in a
billposter's hoarding; and on the river not far away the steamboats
hooted, and, in windy weather, the floorboards hummed to keep them
company.

I suppose some of these real, regular artists wouldn't have called me an
artist at all; for I only painted miniatures, and it was trade-work at
that, copied from photographs and so on. Not that I wasn't jolly good at
it, and punctual too (lots of these high-flown artists have simply no
idea of punctuality); and the loft was cheap, and suited me very well.
But, of course, a sculptor wants a big place on the ground floor; it's
slow work, that with blocks of stone and marble that cost you twenty
pounds every time you lift them; so Benlian had the studio. His name was
on a plate on the door, but I'd never seen him till this time I'm telling
you of.

I was working that evening at one of the prettiest little things I'd ever
done: a girl's head on ivory, that I'd stippled up just like ... oh,
you'd never have thought it was done by hand at all. The daylight had
gone, but I knew that "Prussian" would be about the colour for the eyes
and the bunch of flowers at her breast, and I wanted to finish.

I was working at my little table, with a shade over my eyes; and I jumped
a bit when somebody knocked at the door--not having heard anybody come up
the steps, and not having many visitors anyway. (Letters were always put
into the box in the yard door.)

When I opened the door, there he stood on the platform; and I gave a bit
of a start, having come straight from my ivory, you see. He was one of
these very tall, gaunt chaps, that make us little fellows feel even
smaller than we are; and I wondered at first where his eyes were, they
were set so deep in the dark caves on either side of his nose. Like a
skull, his head was; I could fancy his teeth curving round inside his
cheeks; and his zygomatics stuck up under his skin like razorbacks (but
if you're not one of us artists you'll not understand that). A bit of
smoky, greenish sky showed behind him; and then, as his eyes moved in
their big pits, one of them caught the light of my lamp and flashed like
a well of lustre.

He spoke abruptly, in a deep, shaky sort of voice.

"I want you to photograph me in the morning," he said. I supposed he'd
seen my printing-frames out on the window-sash some time or other.

"Come in," I said. "But I'm afraid, if it's a miniature you want, that
I'm retained--my firm retains me--you'd have to do it through them. But
come in, and I'll show you the kind of thing I do--though you ought to
have come in the daylight ..."

He came in. He was wearing a long, grey dressing-gown that came right
down to his heels and made him look something like a Noah's-ark figure.
Seen in the light, his face seemed more ghastly bony still; and as he
glanced for a moment at my little ivory he made a sound of contempt--I
know it was contempt. I thought it rather cheek, coming into my place
and--

He turned his cavernous eyeholes on me.

"I don't want anything of that sort. I want you to photograph me. I'll be
here at ten in the morning."

So, just to show him that I wasn't to be treated that way, I said, quite
shortly, "I can't. I've an appointment at ten o'clock."

"What's that?" he said--he'd one of these rich deep voices that always
sound consumptive.

"Take that thing off your eyes, and look at me," he ordered.

Well, I was awfully indignant.

"If you think I'm going to be told to do things like this--" I began.

"Take that thing off," he just ordered again.

I've got to remember, of course, that you didn't know Benlian. _I_ didn't
then. And for a chap just to stalk into a fellow's place, and tell him to
photograph him, and order him about ... but you'll see in a minute. I
took the shade off my eyes, just to show him that _I_ could browbeat a
bit too.

I used to have a tall strip of looking-glass leaning against my wall; for
though I didn't use models much, it's awfully useful to go to Nature for
odd bits now and then, and I've sketched myself in that glass, oh,
hundreds of times! We must have been standing in front of it, for all at
once I saw the eyes at the bottom of his pits looking rigidly over my
shoulder. Without moving his eyes from the glass, and scarcely moving his
lips, he muttered:

"Get me a pair of gloves, get me a pair of gloves."

It was a funny thing to ask for; but I got him a pair of my gloves from a
drawer. His hands were shaking so that he could hardly get them on, and
there was a little glistening of sweat on his face, that looked like the
salt that dries on you when you've been bathing in the sea. Then I
turned, to see what it was that he was looking so earnestly and
profoundly at in the mirror. I saw nothing except just the pair of us, he
with my gloves on.

He stepped aside, and slowly drew the gloves off. I think _I_ could have
bullied _him_ just then. He turned to me.

"Did that look all right to you?" he asked.

"Why, my dear chap, whatever ails you?" I cried.

"I suppose," he went on, "you couldn't photograph me to-night--now?"

I could have done, with magnesium, but I hadn't a scrap in the place. I
told him so. He was looking round my studio. He saw my camera standing in
a corner.

"Ah!" he said.

He made a stride towards it. He unscrewed the lens, brought it to the
lamp, and peered attentively through it, now into the air, now at his
sleeve and hand, as if looking for a flaw in it. Then he replaced it, and
pulled up the collar of his dressing-gown as if he was cold.

"Well, another night of it," he muttered; "but," he added, facing
suddenly round on me, "if your appointment was to meet your God Himself,
you must photograph me at ten to-morrow morning!"

"All right," I said, giving in (for he seemed horribly ill). "Draw up to
the stove and have a drink of something and a smoke."

"I neither drink nor smoke," he replied, moving towards the door.

"Sit down and have a chat, then," I urged; for I always like to be decent
with fellows, and it was a lonely sort of place, that yard.

He shook his head.

"Be ready by ten o'clock in the morning," he said; and he passed down my
stairs and crossed the yard to his studio without even having said "Good
night."

Well, he was at my door again at ten o'clock in the morning, and I
photographed him. I made three exposures; but the plates were some that
I'd had in the place for some time, and they'd gone off and fogged in the
developing.

"I'm awfully sorry," I said; "but I'm going out this afternoon, and will
get some more, and we'll have another shot in the morning."

One after the other, he was holding the negatives up to the light and
examining them. Presently he put them down quietly, leaning them
methodically up against the edge of the developing-bath.

"Never mind. It doesn't matter. Thank you," he said; and left me.

After that, I didn't see him for weeks; but at nights I could see the
light of his roof-window, shining through the wreathing river-mists, and
sometimes I heard him moving about, and the muffled knock-knocking of his
hammer on marble.


II

Of course I did see him again, or I shouldn't be telling you all this. He
came to my door, just as he had done before, and at about the same time
in the evening. He hadn't come to be photographed this time, but for all
that it was something about a camera--something he wanted to know. He'd
brought two books with him, big books, printed in German. They were on
Light, he said, and Physics (or else it was Psychics--I always get those
two words wrong). They were full of diagrams and equations and figures;
and, of course, it was all miles above my head.

He talked a lot about "hyper-space," whatever that is; and at first I
nodded, as if I knew all about it. But he very soon saw that I didn't,
and he came down to my level again. What he'd come to ask me was this:
Did I know anything, of my own experience, about things "photographing
through"? (You know the kind of thing: a name that's been painted out on
a board, say, comes up in the plate.)

Well, as it happened, I _had_ once photographed a drawing for a fellow,
and the easel I had stood it on had come up through the picture; and I
knew by the way Benlian nodded that that was the kind of thing he meant.

"More," he said.

I told him I'd once seen a photograph of a man with a bowler hat on, and
the shape of his crown had showed through the hat.

"Yes, yes," he said, musing; and then he asked: "Have you ever heard of
things not photographing at all?"

But I couldn't tell him anything about that; and off he started again,
about Light and Physics and so on. Then, as soon as I could get a word
in, I said, "But, of course, the camera isn't Art." (Some of my
miniatures, you understand, were jolly nice little things.)

"No--no," he murmured absently; and then abruptly he said: "Eh? What's
that? And what the devil do _you_ know about it?"

"Well," said I, in a dignified sort of way, "considering that for ten
years I've been--"

"Chut!... Hold your tongue," he said, turning away.

There he was, talking to me again, just as if I'd asked him in to bully
me. But you've got to be decent to a fellow when he's in your own place;
and by-and-by I asked him, but in a cold, off-hand sort of way, how his
own work was going on. He turned to me again.

"Would you like to see it?" he asked.

"_Aha_!" thought I, "he's got to a sticking-point with his work! It's all
very well," I thought, "for you to sniff at my miniatures, my friend, but
we all get stale on our work sometimes, and the fresh eye, even of a
miniature-painter ..."

"I shall be glad if I can be of any help to you," I answered, still a bit
huffish, but bearing no malice.

"Then come," he said.

We descended and crossed the timber-yard, and he held his door open for
me to pass in.

It was an enormous great place, his studio, and all full of mist; and the
gallery that was his bedroom was up a little staircase at the farther
end. In the middle of the floor was a tall structure of scaffolding, with
a stage or two to stand on; and I could see the dim ghostly marble figure
in the gloom. It had been jacked up on a heavy base; and as it would have
taken three or four men to put it into position, and scarcely a stranger
had entered the yard since I had been there, I knew that the figure must
have stood for a long time. Sculpture's weary, slow work.

Benlian was pottering about with a taper at the end of a long rod; and
suddenly the overhead gas-ring burst into light. I placed myself before
the statue--to criticise, you know.

Well, it didn't seem to me that he needed to have turned up his nose at
my ivories, for I didn't think much of his statue--except that it was a
great, lumping, extraordinary piece of work. It had an outstretched arm
that, I remember thinking, was absolutely misshapen--disproportioned,
big enough for a giant, ridiculously out of drawing. And as I looked at
the thing this way and that, I knew that his eyes in their deep cellars
never left my face for a moment.

"It's a god," he said by-and-by.

Then I began to tell him about that monstrous arm; but he cut me very
short.

"I say it's a god," he interrupted, looking at me as if he would have
eaten me. "Even you, child as you are, have seen the gods men have made
for themselves before this. Half-gods they've made, all good or all evil
(and then they've called them the Devil). This is _my_ god--the god of
good and of evil also."

"Er--I see," I said, rather taken aback (but quite sure he was off his
head for all that). Then I looked at the arm again; a child could have
seen how wrong it was....

But suddenly, to my amazement, he took me by the shoulders and turned me
away.

"That'll do," he said curtly. "I didn't ask you to come in here with a
view to learning anything from you. I wanted to see how it struck you. I
shall send for you again--and again--"

Then he began to jabber, half to himself.

"Bah!" he muttered. "'Is that all?' they ask before a stupendous thing.
Show them the ocean, the heavens, infinity, and they ask, 'Is that all?'
If they saw their God face to face they'd ask it!... There's only one
Cause, that works now in good and now in evil, but show It to them and
they put their heads on one side and begin to appraise and patronise
It!... I tell you, what's seen at a glance flies away at a glance. Gods
come slowly over you, but presently, ah! they begin to grip you, and at
the end there's no fleeing from them! You'll tell me more about my statue
by-and-by!... What was that you said?" he demanded, facing swiftly round
on me. "That arm? Ah, yes; but we'll see what you say about that arm six
months from now! Yes, the arm.... Now be off!" he ordered me. "I'll send
for you again when I want you!"

He thrust me out.

"An asylum, Mr. Benlian," I thought as I crossed the yard, "is the place
for you!" You see, I didn't know him then, and that he wasn't to be
judged as an ordinary man is. Just you wait till you see....

And straight away, I found myself vowing that I'd have nothing more to do
with him. I found myself resolving that, as if I were making up my mind
not to smoke or drink--and (I don't know why) with a similar sense that I
was depriving myself of something. But, somehow, I forgot, and within a
month he'd been in several times to see me, and once or twice had fetched
me in to see his statue.

In two months I was in an extraordinary state of mind about him. I was
familiar with him in a way, but at the same time I didn't know one scrap
more about him. Because I'm a fool (oh, yes, I know quite well, now, what
I am) you'll think I'm talking folly if I even begin to tell you what
sort of a man he was. I don't mean just his knowledge (though I think he
knew everything--sciences, languages, and all that) for it was far more
than that. Somehow, when he was there, he had me all restless and uneasy;
and when he wasn't there I was (there's only the one word for it)
jealous--as jealous as if he'd been a girl! Even yet I can't make it
out....

And he knew how unsettled he'd got me; and I'll tell you how I found that
out.

Straight out one night, when he was sitting up in my place, he asked me:
"Do you like me, Pudgie?" (I forgot to say that I'd told him they used to
call me Pudgie at home, because I was little and fat; it was odd, the
number of things I told him that I wouldn't have told anybody else.)

"Do you like me, Pudgie?" he said.

As for my answer, I don't know how it spurted out. I was much more
surprised than he was, for I really didn't intend it. It was for all the
world as if somebody else was talking with my mouth.

"_I loathe and adore you!_" it came; and then I looked round, awfully
startled to hear myself saying that.

But he didn't look at me. He only nodded.

"Yes. Of good and evil too--" he muttered to himself. And then all of a
sudden he got up and went out.

I didn't sleep for ever so long after that, thinking how odd it was I
should have said that.

Well (to get on), after that something I couldn't account for began to
come over me sometimes as I worked. It began to come over me, without any
warning, that he was thinking of me down there across the yard. I used to
_know_ (this must sound awfully silly to you) that he was down yonder,
thinking of me and doing something to me. And one night I was so sure
that it wasn't fancy that I jumped straight up from my work, and I'm not
quite sure what happened then, until I found myself in his studio, just
as if I'd walked there in my sleep.

And he seemed to be waiting for me, for there was a chair by his own, in
front of the statue.

"What is it, Benlian?" I burst out.

"Ah!" he said.... "Well, it's about that arm, Pudgie; I want you to tell
me about the arm. Does it look so strange as it did?"

"No," I said.

"I thought it wouldn't," he observed. "But I haven't touched it,
Pudgie--"

So I stayed the evening there.

But you must not think he was always doing that thing--whatever it
was--to me. On the other hand, I sometimes felt the oddest sort of
release (I don't know how else to put it) ... like when, on one of these
muggy, earthy-smelling days, when everything's melancholy, the wind
freshens up suddenly and you breathe again. And that (I'm trying to take
it in order, you see, so that it will be plain to you) brings me to the
time I found out that _he_ did that too, and knew when he was doing it.

I'd gone into his place one night to have a look at his statue. It was
surprising what a lot I was finding out about that statue. It was still
all out of proportion (that is to say, I knew it must be--remembered I'd
thought so--though it didn't annoy me now quite so much. I suppose I'd
lost _my_ fresh eye by that time). Somehow, too, my own miniatures had
begun to look a bit kiddish; they made me impatient; and that's horrible,
to be discontented with things that once seemed jolly good to you.

Well, he'd been looking at me in the hungriest sort of way, and I looking
at the statue, when all at once that feeling of release and lightness
came over me. The first I knew of it was that I found myself thinking of
some rather important letters my firm had written to me, wanting to know
when a job I was doing was going to be finished. I thought myself it was
time I got it finished; I thought I'd better set about it at once; and I
sat suddenly up in my chair, as if I'd just come out of a sleep. And,
looking at the statue, I saw it as it had seemed at first--all misshapen
and out of drawing.

The very next moment, as I was rising, I sat down again as suddenly as if
somebody had pulled me back.

Now a chap doesn't like to be changed about like that; so, without
looking at Benlian, I muttered a bit testily, "Don't, Benlian!"

Then I heard him get up and knock his chair away. He was standing behind
me.

"Pudgie," he said, in a moved sort of voice, "I'm no good to you. Get out
of this. Get out--"

"No, no, Benlian!" I pleaded.

"Get out, do you hear, and don't come again! Go and live somewhere
else--go away from London--don't let me know where you go--"

"Oh, what have I done?" I asked unhappily; and he was muttering again.

"Perhaps it would be better for me too," he muttered; and then he added,
"Come, bundle out!"

So in home I went, and finished my ivory for the firm; but I can't tell
you how friendless and unhappy I felt.

Now I used to know in those days a little girl--a nice, warm-hearted
little thing, just friendly you know, who used to come to me sometimes in
another place I lived at and mend for me and so on. It was an awful long
time since I'd seen her; but she found me out one night--came to that
yard, walked straight in, went straight to my linen-bag, and began to
look over my things to see what wanted mending, just as she used to. I
don't mind confessing that I was a bit sweet on her at one time; and it
made me feel awfully mean, the way she came in, without asking any
questions, and took up my mending.

So she sat doing my things, and I sat at my work, glad of a bit of
company; and she chatted as she worked, just jolly and gentle and not at
all reproaching me.

But as suddenly as a shot, right in the middle of it all, I found myself
wondering about Benlian again. And I wasn't only wondering; somehow I was
horribly uneasy about him. It came to me that he might be ill or
something. And all the fun of her having come to see me was gone. I found
myself doing all sorts of stupid things to my work, and glancing at my
watch that was lying on the table before me.

At last I couldn't stand it any longer. I got up.

"Daisy," I said, "I've got to go out now."

She seemed surprised.

"Oh, why didn't you tell me I'd been keeping you!" she said, getting up
at once.

I muttered that I was awfully sorry....

I packed her off. I closed the door in the hoarding behind her. Then I
walked straight across the yard to Benlian's.

He was lying on a couch, not doing anything.

"I know I ought to have come sooner, Benlian," I said, "but I had
somebody with me."

"Yes," he said, looking hard at me; and I got a bit red.

"She's awfully nice," I stammered; "but you never bother with girls, and
you don't drink or smoke--"

"No," he said.

"Well," I continued, "you ought to have a little relaxation; you're
knocking yourself up." And, indeed, he looked awfully ill.

But he shook his head.

"A man's only a definite amount of force in him, Pudgie," he said, "and
if he spends it in one way he goes short in another. Mine goes--there."
He glanced at the statue. "I rarely sleep now," he added.

"Then you ought to see a doctor," I said, a bit alarmed. (I'd felt sure
he was ill.)

"No, no, Pudgie. My force is all going there--all but the minimum that
can't be helped, you know.... You've heard artists talk about 'putting
their soul into their work,' Pudgie?"

"Don't rub it in about my rotten miniatures, Benlian," I asked him.

"You've heard them say that; but they're charlatans, professional
artists, all, Pudgie. They haven't got any souls bigger than a sixpence
to put into it.... You know, Pudgie, that Force and Matter are the same
thing--that it's decided nowadays that you can't define matter otherwise
than as 'a point of Force'?"

"Yes," I found myself saying eagerly, as if I'd heard it dozens of times
before.

"So that if they could put their souls into it, it would be just as easy
for them to put their _bodies_ into it?..."

I had drawn very close to him, and again--it was not fancy--I felt as if
somebody, not me, was using my mouth. A flash of comprehension seemed to
come into my brain.

"_Not that, Benlian_?" I cried breathlessly.

He nodded three or four times, and whispered. I really don't know why we
both whispered.

"_Really that, Benlian_?" I whispered again.

"Shall I show you?... I tried my hardest not to, you know,..." he still
whispered.

"Yes, show me!" I replied in a suppressed voice.

"Don't breathe a sound then! I keep them up there...."

He put his finger to his lips as if we had been two conspirators; then he
tiptoed across the studio and went up to his bedroom in the gallery.
Presently he tiptoed down again, with some rolled-up papers in his hand.
They were photographs, and we stooped together over a little table. His
hand shook with excitement.

"You remember this?" he whispered, showing me a rough print.

It was one of the prints from the fogged plates that I'd taken after that
first night.

"Come closer to me if you feel frightened, Pudgie," he said. "You said
they were old plates, Pudgie. No no; the plates were all right; it's _I_
who am wrong!"

"Of course," I said. It seemed so natural.

"This one," he said, taking up one that was numbered "1," "is a plain
photograph, in the flesh, before it started; _you_ know! Now look at
this, and this--"

He spread them before me, all in order.

"2" was a little fogged, as if a novice had taken it; on "3" a sort of
cloudy veil partly obliterated the face; "4" was still further smudged
and lost; and "5" was a figure with gloved hands held up, as a man holds
his hands up when he is covered by a gun. The face of this one was
completely blotted out.

And it didn't seem in the least horrible to me, for I kept on murmuring,
"Of course, of course."

Then Benlian rubbed his hands and smiled at me. "I'm making good
progress, am I not?" he said.

"Splendid!" I breathed.

"Better than you know, too," he chuckled, "for you're not properly under
yet. But you will be, Pudgie, you will be--"

"Yes, yes!... Will it be long, Benlian?"

"No," he replied, "not if I can keep from eating and sleeping and
thinking of other things than the statue--and if you don't disturb me by
having girls about the place, Pudgie."

"I'm awfully sorry," I said contritely.

"All right, all right; ssh!... This, you know, Pudgie, is my own studio;
I bought it; I bought it purposely to make my statue, my god. I'm passing
nicely into it; and when I'm quite passed--_quite_ passed, Pudgie--you
can have the key and come in when you like."

"Oh, thanks awfully," I murmured gratefully.

He nudged me.

"What would they think of it, Pudgie--those of the exhibitions and
academies, who say 'their souls are in their work'? What would the
cacklers think of it, Pudgie?"

"Aren't they fools!" I chuckled.

"And I shall have _one_ worshipper, shan't I, Pudgie?"

"Rather!" I replied. "Isn't it splendid!... Oh, need I go back just yet?"

"Yes, you must go now; but I'll send for you again very soon.... You know
I tried to do without you, Pudge; I tried for thirteen days, and it
nearly killed me! That's past. I shan't try again. Now off you trot, my
Pudgie--"

I winked at him knowingly, and came skipping and dancing across the yard.


III

It's just silly--that's what it is--to say that something of a man
doesn't go into his work.

Why, even those wretched little ivories of mine, the thick-headed fellows
who paid for them knew my touch in them, and once spotted it instantly
when I tried to slip in another chap's who was hard up. Benlian used to
say that a man went about spreading himself over everything he came in
contact with--diffusing some sort of influence (as far as I could make it
out); and the mistake was, he said, that we went through the world just
wasting it instead of directing it. And if Benlian didn't understand all
about those things, I should jolly well like to know who does! A chap
with a great abounding will and brain like him, it's only natural he
should be able to pass himself on, to a statue or anything else, when he
really tried--did without food and talk and sleep in order to save
himself up for it!

"A man can't both _do_ and _be_," I remember he said to me once. "He's so
much force, no more, and he can either make himself with it or something
else. If he tries to do both, he does both imperfectly. I'm going to do
_one_ perfect thing." Oh, he was a queer chap! Fancy, a fellow making a
thing like that statue, out of himself, and then wanting somebody to
adore him!

And I hadn't the faintest conception of how much I did adore him till
yet again, as he had done before, he seemed to--you know--to take
himself away from me again, leaving me all alone, and so wretched!... And
I was angry at the same time, for he'd promised me he wouldn't do it
again.... (This was one night, I don't remember when.)

I ran to my landing and shouted down into the yard.

"Benlian! Benlian!"

There was a light in his studio, and I heard a muffled shout come back.

"Keep away--keep away--keep away!"

He was struggling--I knew he was struggling as I stood there on my
landing--struggling to let me go. And I could only run and throw myself
on my bed and sob, while he tried to set me free, who didn't want to be
set free ... he was having a terrific struggle, all alone there....

(He told me afterwards that he _had_ to eat something now and then and to
sleep a little, and that weakened him--strengthened him--strengthened
his body and weakened the passing, you know.)

But the next day it was all right again. I was Benlian's again. And I
wondered, when I remembered his struggle, whether a dying man had ever
fought for life as hard as Benlian was fighting to get away from it and
pass himself.

The next time after that that he fetched me--called me--whatever you like
to name it--I burst into his studio like a bullet. He was sunk in a big
chair, gaunt as a mummy now, and all the life in him seemed to burn in
the bottom of his deep eye-sockets. At the sight of him I fiddled with
my knuckles and giggled.

"You _are_ going it, Benlian!" I said.

"Am I not?" he replied, in a voice that was scarcely a breath.

"You _meant_ me to bring the camera and magnesium, didn't you?" (I had
snatched them up when I felt his call, and had brought them.)

"Yes. Go ahead."

So I placed the camera before him, made all ready, and took the magnesium
ribbon in a pair of pincers.

"Are you ready?" I said; and lighted the ribbon.

The studio seemed to leap with the blinding glare. The ribbon spat and
spluttered. I snapped the shutter, and the fumes drifted away and hung
in clouds in the roof.

"You'll have to walk me about soon, Pudgie, and bang me with bladders, as
they do the opium-patients," he said sleepily.

"Let me take one of the statue now," I said eagerly.

But he put up his hand.

"No, no. _That's_ too much like testing our god. Faith's the food they
feed gods on, Pudgie. We'll let the S.P.R. people photograph it when it's
all over," he said. "Now get it developed."

I developed the plate. The obliteration now seemed complete.

But Benlian seemed dissatisfied.

"There's something wrong somewhere," he said. "It isn't so perfect as
that yet--I can feel within me it isn't. It's merely that your camera
isn't strong enough to find me, Pudgie."

"I'll get another in the morning," I cried.

"No," he answered. "I know something better than that. Have a cab here by
ten o'clock in the morning, and we'll go somewhere."

By half-past ten the next morning we had driven to a large hospital, and
had gone down a lot of steps and along corridors to a basement room.
There was a stretcher couch in the middle of the room, and all manner of
queer appliances, frames of ground glass, tubes of glass blown into
extraordinary shapes, a dynamo, and a lot of other things all about. A
couple of doctors were there too, and Benlian was talking to them.

"We'll try my hand first," Benlian said by-and-by.

He advanced to the couch, and put his hand under one of the frames of
ground glass. One of the doctors did something in a corner. A harsh
crackling filled the room, and an unearthly, fluorescent light shot and
flooded across the frame where Benlian's hand was. The two doctors
looked, and then started back. One of them gave a cry. He was sickly
white.

"Put me on the couch," said Benlian.

I and the doctor who was not ill lifted him on the canvas stretcher. The
green-gleaming frame of fluctuating light was passed over the whole of
his body. Then the doctor ran to a telephone and called a colleague....

We spent the morning there, with dozens of doctors coming and going. Then
we left. All the way home in the cab Benlian chuckled to himself.

"That scared 'em, Pudgie!" he chuckled. "A man they can't X-ray--that
scared 'em! We must put that down in the diary--"

"Wasn't it ripping!" I chuckled back.

He kept a sort of diary or record. He gave it to me afterwards, but
they've borrowed it. It was as big as a ledger, and immensely valuable,
I'm sure; they oughtn't to borrow valuable things like that and not
return them. The laughing that Benlian and I have had over that diary!
It fooled them all--the clever X-ray men, the artists of the academies,
everybody! Written on the fly-leaf was "_To My Pudgie_." I shall publish
it when I get it back again.

Benlian had now got frightfully weak; it's awfully hard work, passing
yourself. And he had to take a little milk now and then or he'd have
died before he had quite finished. I didn't bother with miniatures any
longer, and when angry letters came from my employers we just put them
into the fire, Benlian and I, and we laughed--that is to say, I laughed,
but Benlian only smiled, being too weak to laugh really. He'd lots of
money, so that was all right; and I slept in his studio, to be there for
the passing.

And that wouldn't be very long now, I thought; and I was always looking
at the statue. Things like that (in case you don't know) have to be done
gradually, and I supposed he was busy filling up the inside of it and
hadn't got to the outside yet--for the statue was much the same to look
at. But, reckoning off his sips of milk and snatches of sleep, he was
making splendid progress, and the figure must be getting very full now.
I was awfully excited, it was getting so near....

And then somebody came bothering and nearly spoiling all. It's odd, but I
really forget exactly what it was. I only know there was a funeral, and
people were sobbing and looking at me, and somebody said I was callous,
but somebody else said, "No, look at him," and that it was just the other
way about. And I think I remember, now, that it wasn't in London, for I
was in a train; but after the funeral I dodged them, and found myself
back at Euston again. They followed me, but I shook them off. I locked my
own studio up, and lay as quiet as a mouse in Benlian's place when they
came hammering at the door....

       *       *       *       *       *

And now I must come to what you'll called the finish--though it's awfully
stupid to call things like that "finishes."

I'd slipped into my own studio one night--I forget what for; and I'd gone
quietly, for I knew they were following me, those people, and would catch
me if they could. It was a thick, misty night, and the light came
streaming up through Benlian's roof window, with the shadows of the
window-divisions losing themselves like dark rays in the fog. A lot of
hooting was going on down the river, steamers and barges.... Oh, I know
what I'd come into my studio for! It was for those negatives. Benlian
wanted them for the diary, so that it could be seen there wasn't any
fake about the prints. For he'd said he would make a final spurt that
evening and get the job finished. It had taken a long time, but I'll bet
_you_ couldn't have passed _yourself_ any quicker.

When I got back he was sitting in the chair he'd hardly left for weeks,
and the diary was on the table by his side. I'd taken all the scaffolding
down from the statue, and he was ready to begin. He had to waste one last
bit of strength to explain to me, but I drew as close as I could, so that
he wouldn't lose much.

"Now, Pudgie," I just heard him say, "you've behaved splendidly, and
you'll be quite still up to the finish, won't you?"

I nodded.

"And you mustn't expect the statue to come down and walk about,
or anything like that," he continued. "_Those_ aren't the really
wonderful things. And no doubt people will tell you it hasn't changed;
but you'll know better! It's much more wonderful that I should be there
than that they should be able to prove it, isn't it?... And, of course,
I don't know exactly how it will happen, for I've never done this
before.... You have the letter for the S.P.R.? They can photograph it if
they want.... By the way, you don't think the same of my statue as you
did at first, do you?"

"Oh, it's wonderful!" I breathed.

"And even if, like the God of the others, it doesn't vouchsafe a special
sign and wonder, it's Benlian, for all that?"

"Oh, do be quick, Benlian! I can't bear another minute!"

Then, for the last time, he turned his great eaten-out eyes on me.

"_I seal you mine, Pudgie_!" he said.

Then his eyes fastened themselves on the statue.

I waited for a quarter of an hour, scarcely breathing. Benlian's breath
came in little flutters, many seconds apart. He had a little clock on the
table. Twenty minutes passed, and half an hour. I was a little
disappointed, really, that the statue wasn't going to move; but Benlian
knew best, and it was filling quietly up with him instead. Then I thought
of those zigzag bunches of lightning they draw on the electric-belt
advertisements, and I was rather glad after all that the statue _wasn't_
going to move. It would have been a little cheap, that ... vulgar, in a
sense.... He was breathing a little more sharply now, as if in pain, but
his eyes never moved. A dog was howling somewhere, and I hoped that the
hooting of the tugs wouldn't disturb Benlian....

Nearly an hour had passed when, all of a sudden, I pushed my chair
farther away and cowered back, gnawing my fingers, very frightened.
Benlian had suddenly moved. He'd set himself forward in his chair, and he
seemed to be strangling. His mouth was wide open, and he began to make
long harsh "_Aaaaah-aaaah's_!" I shouldn't have thought passing yourself
was such agony....

And then I gave a scream--for he seemed to be thrusting himself back in
his chair again, as if he'd changed his mind and didn't want to pass
himself at all. But just you ask anybody: When you get yourself just over
half-way passed, the other's dragged out of you, and you can't help
yourself. His "_Aaaaahs_!" became so loud and horrid that I shut my eyes
and stopped my ears.... Minutes that lasted; and then there came a high
dinning that I couldn't shut out, and all at once the floor shook with a
heavy thump. When all was still again I opened my eyes.

His chair had overturned, and he lay in a heap beside it.

I called "Benlian!" but he didn't answer....

He'd passed beautifully; quite dead. I looked up at the statue. It was
just as Benlian had said--it didn't open its eyes, nor speak, nor
anything like that. Don't you believe chaps who tell you that statues
that have been passed into do that; they don't.

But instead, in a blaze and flash and shock, I knew now for the first
time what a glorious thing that statue was! Have you ever seen anything
for the first time like that? If you have, you never see very much
afterwards, you know. The rest's all piffle after that. It was like
coming out of fog and darkness into a split in the open heavens, my
statue was so transfigured; and I'll bet if you'd been there you'd have
clapped your hands, as I did, and chucked the tablecloth over the Benlian
on the floor till they should come to cart that empty shell away, and
patted the statue's foot and cried: "_Is it all right, Benlian_?"

I did this; and then I rushed excitedly out into the street, to call
somebody to see how glorious it was....

       *       *       *       *       *

They've brought me here for a holiday, and I'm to go back to the studio
in two or three days. But they've said that before, and I think it's
caddish of fellows not to keep their word--and not to return a valuable
diary too! But there isn't a peephole in my room, as there is in some of
them (the Emperor of Brazil told me that); and Benlian knows I haven't
forsaken him, for they take me a message every day to the studio, and
Benlian always answers that it's "_all right_, and I'm to stay where I am
for a bit." So as long as he knows, I don't mind so much. But it is a bit
rotten hanging on here, especially when the doctors themselves admit how
reasonable it all is.... Still, if Benlian says it's "_All right_ ..."


IO


As the young man put his hand to the uppermost of the four brass
bell-knobs to the right of the fanlighted door he paused, withdrew the
hand again, and then pulled at the lowest knob. The sawing of bell-wire
answered him, and he waited for a moment, uncertain whether the bell had
rung, before pulling again. Then there came from the basement a single
cracked stroke; the head of a maid appeared in the whitewashed area
below; and the head was withdrawn as apparently the maid recognised him.
Steps were heard along the hall; the door was opened; and the maid stood
aside to let him enter, the apron with which she had slipped the latch
still crumpled in her greasy hand.

"Sorry, Daisy," the young man apologised, "but I didn't want to bring her
down all those stairs. How is she? Has she been out to-day?"

The maid replied that the person spoken of had been out; and the young
man walked along the wide carpeted passage.

It was cumbered like an antique-shop with alabaster busts on pedestals,
dusty palms in faience vases, and trophies of spears and shields and
assegais. At the foot of the stairs was a rustling portière of strung
beads, and beyond it the carpet was continued up the broad, easy flight,
secured at each step by a brass rod. Where the stairs made a turn, the
fading light of the December afternoon, made still dimmer by a window of
decalcomanied glass, shone on a cloudy green aquarium with sallow
goldfish, a number of cacti on a shabby console table, and a large and
dirty white sheepskin rug. Passing along a short landing, the young man
began the ascent of the second flight. This also was carpeted, but with a
carpet that had done duty in some dining- or bed-room before being cut up
into strips of the width of the narrow space between the wall and the
handrail. Then, as he still mounted, the young man's feet sounded loud on
oilcloth; and when he finally paused and knocked at a door it was on a
small landing of naked boards beneath the cold gleam of the skylight
above the well of the stairs.

"Come in," a girl's voice called.

The room he entered had a low sagging ceiling on which shone a low glow
of firelight, making colder still the patch of eastern sky beyond the
roofs and the cowls and hoods of chimneys framed by the square of the
single window. The glow on the ceiling was reflected dully in the old
dark mirror over the mantelpiece. An open door in the farther corner,
hampered with skirts and blouses, allowed a glimpse of the girl's
bedroom.

The young man set the paper bag he carried down on the littered round
table and advanced to the girl who sat in an old wicker chair before
the fire. The girl did not turn her head as he kissed her cheek, and he
looked down at something that had muffled the sound of his steps as
he had approached her.

"Hallo, that's new, isn't it, Bessie? Where did that come from?" he asked
cheerfully.

The middle of the floor was covered with a common jute matting, but on
the hearth was a magnificent leopard-skin rug.

"Mrs. Hepburn sent it up. There was a draught from under the door. It's
much warmer for my feet."

"Very kind of Mrs. Hepburn. Well, how are you feeling to-day, old girl?"

"Better, thanks, Ed."

"That's the style. You'll be yourself again soon. Daisy says you've been
out to-day?"

"Yes, I went for a walk. But not far; I went to the Museum and then sat
down. You're early, aren't you?"

He turned away to get a chair, from which he had to move a mass of
tissue-paper patterns and buckram linings. He brought it to the rug.

"Yes. I stopped last night late to cash up for Vedder, so he's staying
to-night. Turn and turn about. Well, tell us all about it, Bess."

Their faces were red in the firelight. Hers had the prettiness that the
first glance almost exhausts, the prettiness, amazing in its quantity,
that one sees for a moment under the light of the street lamps when shops
and offices close for the day. She was short-nosed, pulpy-mouthed and
faunish-eyed, and only the rather remarkable smallness of the head on the
splendid thick throat saved her from ordinariness. He, too, might have
been seen in his thousands at the close of any day, hurrying home to
Catford or Walham Green or Tufnell Park to tea and an evening with a
girl or in a billiard-room, or else dining cheaply "up West" preparatory
to smoking cigarettes from yellow packets in the upper circle of a
music-hall. Four inches of white up-and-down collar encased his neck; and
as he lifted his trousers at the knee to clear his purple socks, the pair
of paper covers showed, that had protected his cuffs during the day at
the office. He removed them, crumpled them up and threw them on the fire;
and the momentary addition to the light of the upper chamber showed how
curd-white was that superb neck of hers and how moody and tired her eyes.

From his face only one would have guessed, and guessed wrongly, that his
preferences were for billiard-rooms and music-halls. His conversation
showed them to be otherwise. It was of Polytechnic classes that he spoke,
and of the course of lectures in English literature that had just begun.
And, as if somebody had asserted that the pursuit of such studies was not
compatible with a certain measure of physical development also, he
announced that he was not sure that he should not devote, say, half an
evening a week, on Wednesdays, to training in the gymnasium.

"_Mens sana in corpore sano_, Bessie," he said; "a sound mind in a sound
body, you know. That's tremendously important, especially when a fellow
spends the day in a stuffy office. Yes, I think I shall give it half
Wednesdays, from eight-thirty to nine-thirty; sends you home in a glow.
But I was going to tell you about the Literature Class. The second
lecture's to-night. The first was splendid, all about the languages of
Europe and Asia--what they call the Indo-Germanic languages, you know.
Aryans. I can't tell you exactly without my notes, but the Hindoos and
Persians, I think it was, they crossed the Himalaya Mountains and spread
westward somehow, as far as Europe. That was the way it all began. It
was splendid, the way the lecturer put it. English is a Germanic
language, you know. Then came the Celts. I wish I'd brought my notes. I
see you've been reading; let's look--"

A book lay on her knees, its back warped by the heat of the fire. He took
it and opened it.

"Ah, Keats! Glad you like Keats, Bessie. We needn't be great readers, but
it's important that what we do read should be all right. I don't know
him, not _really_ know him, that is. But he's quite all right--A1 in
fact. And he's an example of what I've always maintained, that knowledge
should be brought within the reach of all. It just shows. He was the son
of a livery-stable keeper, you know, so what he'd have been if he'd
really had chances, been to universities and so on, there's no knowing.
But, of course, it's more from the historical standpoint that I'm
studying these things. Let's have a look--"

He opened the book where a hairpin between the leaves marked a place.
The firelight glowed on the page, and he read, monotonously and
inelastically:

"_And as I sat, over the light blue hills
There came a noise of revellers; the rills
Into the wide stream came of purple hue--
  'Twas Bacchus and his crew!
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
From kissing cymbals made a merry din--
  'Twas Bacchus and his kin!
Like to a moving vintage down they came,
Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame
All madly dancing through the pleasant valley
  To scare thee, Melancholy!"_

It was the wondrous passage from _Endymion_, of the descent of the wild
inspired rabble into India. Ed plucked for a moment at his lower lip, and
then, with a "Hm! What's it all about, Bessie?" continued:

_"Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood,
Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood,
  With sidelong laughing;
And little rills of crimson wine imbrued
His plump white arms and shoulders, enough white
  For Venus' pearly bite;
And near him rode Silenus on his ass,
Pelted with flowers as he on did pass,
  Tipsily quaffing."_

"Hm! I see. Mythology. That's made up of tales, and myths, you know. Like
Odin and Thor and those, only those were Scandinavian Mythology. So it
would be absurd to take it too seriously. But I think, in a way, things
like that do harm. You see," he explained, "the more beautiful they are
the more harm they might do. We ought always to show virtue and vice in
their true colours, and if you look at it from that point of view this is
just drunkenness. That's rotten; destroys your body and intellect; as I
heard a chap say once, it's an insult to the beasts to call it beastly. I
joined the Blue Ribbon when I was fourteen and I haven't been sorry for
it yet. No. Now there's Vedder; he 'went off on a bend,' as he calls it,
last night, and even he says this morning it wasn't worth it. But let's
read on."

Again he read, with unresilient movement:

"_I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown
Before the vine wreath crown!
  I saw parched Abyssinia rouse and sing
  To the silver cymbals' ring!
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce
  Old Tartary the fierce!
Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans_ ..."

"Hm! He was a Buddhist god, Brahma was; mythology again. As I say, if you
take it seriously, it's just glorifying intoxication.--But I say; I can
hardly see. Better light the lamp. We'll have tea first, then read. No,
you sit still; I'll get it ready; I know where things are--"

He rose, crossed to a little cupboard with a sink in it, filled the
kettle at the tap, and brought it to the fire. Then he struck a match and
lighted the lamp.

The cheap glass shade was of a foolish corolla shape, clear glass below,
shading to pink, and deepening to red at the crimped edge. It gave a
false warmth to the spaces of the room above the level of the
mantelpiece, and Ed's figure, as he turned the regulator, looked from the
waist upwards as if he stood within that portion of a spectrum screen
that deepens to the band of red. The bright concentric circles that
spread in rings of red on the ceiling were more dimly reduplicated in the
old mirror over the mantelpiece; and the wintry eastern light beyond the
chimney-hoods seemed suddenly almost to die out.

Bessie, her white neck below the level of the lamp-shade, had taken up
the book again; but she was not reading. She was looking over it at the
upper part of the grate. Presently she spoke. "I was looking at some of
those things this afternoon, at the Museum."

He was clearing from the table more buckram linings and patterns of
paper, numbers of Myra's Journal and The Delineator. Already on his way
to the cupboard he had put aside a red-bodiced dressmaker's "shape" of
wood and wire. "What things?" he asked.

"Those you were reading about. Greek, aren't they?"

"Oh, the Greek room!... But those people, Bacchus and those, weren't
people in the ordinary sense. Gods and goddesses, most of 'em; Bacchus
was a god. That's what mythology means. I wish sometimes our course took
in Greek literature, but it's a dead language after all. German's more
good in modern life. It would be nice to know everything, but one has to
select, you know. Hallo, I clean forgot; I brought you some grapes,
Bessie; here they are, in this bag; we'll have 'em after tea, what?"

"But," she said again after a pause, still looking at the grate, "they
had their priests and priestesses, and followers and people, hadn't they?
It was their things I was looking at--combs and brooches and hairpins,
and things to cut their nails with. They're all in a glass case there.
And they had safety-pins, exactly like ours."

"Oh, they were a civilised people," said Ed cheerfully. "It all gives you
an idea. I only hope you didn't tire yourself out. You'll soon be all
right, of course, but you have to be careful yet. We'll have a clean
tablecloth, shall we?"

She had been seriously ill; her life had been despaired of; and somehow
the young Polytechnic student seemed anxious to assure her that she was
now all right again, or soon would be. They were to be married "as soon
as things brightened up a bit," and he was very much in love with her. He
watched her head and neck as he continued to lay the table, and then, as
he crossed once more to the cupboard, he put his hand lightly in passing
on her hair.

She gave so quick a start that he too started. She must have been very
deep in her reverie to have been so taken by surprise.

"I say, Bessie, don't jump like that!" he cried with involuntary
quickness. Indeed, had his hand been red-hot, or ice-cold, or taloned,
she could not have turned a more startled, even frightened, face to him.

"It was your touching me," she muttered, resuming her gazing into the
grate.

He stood looking anxiously down on her. It would have been better not to
discuss her state, and he knew it; but in his anxiety he forgot it.

"That jumpiness is the effect of your illness, you know. I shall be glad
when it's all over. It's made you so odd."

She was not pleased that he should speak of her "oddness." For that
matter, she, too, found him "odd"--at any rate, found it difficult to
realise that he was as he always had been. He had begun to irritate her a
little. His club-footed reading of the verses had irritated her, and she
had tried hard to hide from him that his cocksure opinions and the tone
in which they were pronounced jarred on her. It was not that she was
"better" than he, "knew" any more than he did, didn't (she supposed) love
him still the same; these moods, that dated from her illness, had nothing
to do with those things; she reproached herself sometimes that she was
subject to such doldrums.

"It's all right, Ed, but please don't touch me just now," she said.

He was in the act of leaning over her chair, but he saw her shrink, and
refrained.

"Poor old girl!" he said sympathetically. "What's the matter?"

"I don't know. It's awfully stupid of me to be like this, but I can't
help it. I shall be better soon if you leave me alone."

"Nothing's happened, has it?"

"Only those silly dreams I told you about."

"Bother the dreams!" muttered the Polytechnic student.

During her illness she had had dreams, and had come to herself at
intervals to find Ed or the doctor, Mrs. Hepburn or her aunt, bending
over her. These kind, solicitous faces had been no more than a glimpse,
and then she had gone off into the dreams again. The curious thing had
been that the dreams had seemed to be her vivid waking life, and the
other things--the anxious faces, the details of her dingy bedroom, the
thermometer under her tongue--had been the dream. And, though she had
come back to actuality, the dreams had never quite vanished. She could
remember no more of them than that they had seemed to hold a high singing
and jocundity, issuing from some region of haze and golden light; and
they seemed to hover, ever on the point of being recaptured, yet ever
eluding all her mental efforts. She was living now between reality and a
vision.

She had fewer words than sensations, and it was a little pitiful to hear
her vainly striving to make clear what she meant.

"It's so queer," she said. "It's like being on the edge of something--a
sort of tiptoe--I can't describe it. Sometimes I could almost touch it
with my hand, and then it goes away, but never quite away. It's like
something just past the corner of my eye, over my shoulder, and I sit
very still sometimes, trying to take it off its guard. But the moment I
move my head it moves too--like this--"

Again he gave a quick start at the suddenness of her action. Very
stealthily her faunish eyes had stolen sideways, and then she had swiftly
turned her head.

"Here, I say, don't, Bessie!" he cried nervously. "You look awfully
uncanny when you do that! You're brooding," he continued, "that's what
you're doing, brooding. You're getting into a low state. You want bucking
up. I don't think I shall go to the Polytec. to-night; I shall stay and
cheer you up. You know, I really don't think you're making an effort,
darling."

His last words seemed to strike her. They seemed to fit in with something
of which she too was conscious. "Not making an effort ..." she wondered
how he knew that. She felt in some vague way that it was important that
she should make an effort.

For, while her dream ever evaded her, and yet never ceased to call her
with such a voice as he who reads on a magic page of the calling of elves
hears stilly in his brain, yet somehow behind the seduction was another
and a sterner voice. There was warning as well as fascination. Beyond
that edge at which she strained on tiptoe, mingled with the jocund calls
to Hasten, Hasten, were deeper calls that bade her Beware. They puzzled
her. Beware of what? Of what danger? And to whom?...

"How do you mean, I'm not making an effort, Ed?" she asked slowly, again
looking into the fire, where the kettle now made a gnat-like singing.

"Why, an effort to get all right again. To be as you used to be--as, of
course, you will be soon."

"As I used to be?" The words came with a little check in her breathing.

"Yes, before all this. To be yourself, you know."

"Myself?"

"All jolly, and without these jerks and jumps. I wish you could get away.
A fortnight by the sea would do you all the good in the world."

She knew not what it was in the words "the sea" that caused her suddenly
to breathe more deeply. The sea!... It was as if, by the mere uttering of
them, he had touched some secret spring, brought to fulfilment some
spell. What had he meant by speaking of the sea?... A fortnight before,
had somebody spoken to her of the sea it would have been the sea of
Margate, of Brighton, of Southend, that, supplying the image that a word
calls up as if by conjuration, she would have seen before her; and what
other image could she supply, could she possibly supply, now?... Yet she
did, or almost did, supply one. What new experience had she had, or what
old, old one had been released in her? With that confused, joyous dinning
just beyond the range of physical hearing there had suddenly mingled
a new illusion of sound--a vague, vast pash and rustle, silky and harsh
both at once, its tireless voice holding meanings of stillness and
solitude compared with which the silence that is mere absence of sound
was vacancy. It was part of her dream, invisible, intangible, inaudible,
yet there. As if he had been an enchanter, it had come into being at the
word upon his lips. Had he other such words? Had he the Master Word
that--(ah, she knew what the Master Word would do!)--would make the
Vision the Reality and the Reality the Vision? Deep within her she felt
something--her soul, herself, she knew not what--thrill and turn over and
settle again....

"The sea," she repeated in a low voice.

"Yes, that's what you want to set you up--rather! Do you remember that
fortnight at Littlehampton, you and me and your Aunt? Jolly that was! I
like Littlehampton. It isn't flash like Brighton, and Margate's always so
beastly crowded. And do you remember that afternoon by the windmill? I
did love you that afternoon, Bessie!"...

He continued to talk, but she was not listening. She was wondering why
the words "the sea" were somehow part of it all--the pins and brooches
of the Museum, the book on her knees, the dream. She remembered a game of
hide-and-seek she had played as a child, in which cries of "Warm, warm,
warmer!" had announced the approach to the hidden object. Oh, she was
getting warm--positively hot....

He had ceased to talk, and was watching her. Perhaps it was the thought
of how he had loved her that afternoon by the windmill that had brought
him close to her chair again. She was aware of his nearness, and closed
her eyes for a moment as if she dreaded something. Then she said quickly,
"Is tea nearly ready, Ed?" and, as he turned to the table, took up the
book again.

She felt that even to touch that book brought her "warmer." It fell open
at a page. She did not hear the clatter Ed made at the table, nor yet the
babble his words had evoked, of the pierrots and banjos and minstrels of
Margate and Littlehampton. It was to hear a gladder, wilder tumult that
she sat once more so still, so achingly listening....

_"The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
From kissing cymbals made a merry din--"_

The words seemed to move on the page. In her eyes another light than the
firelight seemed to play. Her breast rose, and in her thick white throat
a little inarticulate sound twanged.

"Eh? Did you speak, Bessie?" Ed asked, stopping in his buttering of
bread.

"Eh?... No."

In answering, her head had turned for a moment, and she had seen him.
Suddenly it struck her with force: what a shaving of a man he was!
Desk-chested, weak-necked, conscious of his little "important" lip
and chin--yes, he needed a Polytechnic gymnastic course! Then she
remarked how once, at Margate, she had seen him in the distance, as
in a hired baggy bathing-dress he had bathed from a machine, in muddy
water, one of a hundred others, all rather cold, flinging a polo-ball
about and shouting stridently. "A sound mind in a sound body!"... He
was rather vain of his neat shoes, too, and doubtless stunted his
feet; and she had seen the little spot on his neck caused by the
chafing of his collar-stud.... No, she did not want him to touch her,
just now at any rate. His touch would be too like a betrayal of another
touch ... somewhere, sometime, somehow ... in that tantalising dream
that refused to allow itself either to be fully remembered or quite
forgotten. What was that dream? What was it?...

She continued to gaze into the fire.

Of a sudden she sprang to her feet with a choked cry of almost animal
fury. The fool had touched her. Carried away doubtless by the memory of
that afternoon by the windmill, he had, in passing once more to the
kettle, crept softly behind her and put a swift burning kiss on the side
of her neck.

Then he had retreated before her, stumbling against the table and causing
the cups and saucers to jingle.

The basket-chair tilted up, but righted itself again.

"I told you--I told you--" she choked, her stockish figure shaking with
rage, "I told you--you--"

He put up his elbow as if to ward off a blow.

"_You_ touch me--_you!--you!_" the words broke from her.

He had put himself farther round the table. He stammered.

"Here--dash it all, Bessie--what is the matter?"

"_You_ touch me!"

"All right," he said sullenly. "I won't touch you again--no fear. I
didn't know you were such a firebrand. All right, drop it now. I won't
again. Good Lord!"

Slowly the white fist she had drawn back sank to her side again.

"All right now," he continued to grumble resentfully. "You needn't take
on so. It's said--I won't touch you again." Then, as if he remembered
that after all she was ill and must be humoured, he began, while her
bosom still rose and fell rapidly, to talk with an assumption that
nothing much had happened. "Come, sit down again, Bessie. The tea's in
the pot and I'll have it ready in a couple of jiffs. What a ridiculous
little girl you are, to take on like that!... And I say, listen! That's a
muffin-bell, and there's a grand fire for toast! You sit down while I run
out and get 'em. Give me your key, so I can let myself in again--"

He took her key from her bag, caught up his hat, and hastened out.

But she did not sit down again. She was no calmer for his quick
disappearance. In that moment when he had recoiled from her she had had
the expression of some handsome and angered snake, its hood puffed, ready
to strike. She stood dazed; one would have supposed that that ill-advised
kiss of his had indeed been the Master Word she sought, the Word she felt
approaching, the Word to which the objects of the Museum, the book, that
rustle of a sea she had never seen, had been but the ever "warming"
stages. Some merest trifle stood between her and those elfin cries,
between her and that thin golden mist in which faintly seen shapes seemed
to move--shapes almost of tossed arms, waving, brandishing objects
strangely all but familiar. That roaring of the sea was not the rushing
of her own blood in her ears, that rosy flush not the artificial glow of
the cheap red lampshade. The shapes were almost as plain as if she saw
them in some clear but black mirror, the sounds almost as audible as if
she heard them through some not very thick muffling....

"Quick--the book," she muttered.

But even as she stretched out her hand for it, again came that solemn
sound of warning. As if something sought to stay it, she had deliberately
to thrust her hand forward. Again the high dinning calls of "Hasten!
Hasten!" were mingled with that deeper "Beware!" She knew in her soul
that, once over that terrible edge, the Dream would become the Reality
and the Reality the Dream. She knew nothing of the fluidity of the thing
called Personality--not a thing at all, but a state, a balance, a
relation, a resultant of forces so delicately in equilibrium that a
touch, and--pff!--the horror of Formlessness rushed over all.

As she hesitated a new light appeared in the chamber. Within the frame of
the small square window, beyond the ragged line of the chimney-cowls,
an edge of orange brightness showed. She leaned forward. It was the full
moon, rusty and bloated and flattened by the earth-mist.

The next moment her hand had clutched at the book.

_"Whence came ye, merry Damsels! Whence came ye
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your bowers desolate,
      Your lutes, and gentler fate?
'We follow Bacchus, Bacchus on the wing A-conquering!
Bacchus, young Bacchus! Good or ill betide
We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide!
Come hither, Lady fair, and joined be
      To our wild minstrelsy!'"_

There was an instant in which darkness seemed to blot out all else; then
it rolled aside, and in a blaze of brightness was gone. It was gone, and
she stood face to face with her Dream, that for two thousand years had
slumbered in the blood of her and her line. She stood, with mouth agape
and eyes that hailed, her thick throat full of suppressed clamour. The
other was the Dream now, and these!... they came down, mad and noisy
and bright--Maenades, Thyades, satyrs, fauns--naked, in hides of beasts,
ungirded, dishevelled, wreathed and garlanded, dancing, singing,
shouting. The thudding of their hooves shook the ground, and the clash of
their timbrels and the rustling of their thyrsi filled the air. They
brandished frontal bones, the dismembered quarters of kids and goats;
they struck the bronze cantharus, they tossed the silver obba up aloft.
Down a cleft of rocks and woods they came, trooping to a wide seashore
with the red of the sunset behind them. She saw the evening light on the
sleek and dappled hides, the gilded ivory and rich brown of their legs
and shoulders, the white of inner arms held up on high, their wide red
mouths, the quivering of the twin flesh-gouts on the necks of the leaping
fauns. And, shutting out the glimpse of sky at the head of the deep
ravine, the god himself descended, with his car full of drunken girls who
slept with the serpents coiled about them.

Shouting and moaning and frenzied, leaping upon one another with
libidinous laughter and beating one another with the half-stripped
thyrsi, they poured down to the yellow sands and the anemonied pools of
the shore. They raced to the water, that gleamed pale as nacre in the
deepening twilight in the eye of the evening star. They ran along its
edge over their images in the wet sands, calling their lost companion.

"Hasten, hasten!" they cried; and one of them, a young man with a torso
noble as the dawn and shoulder-lines strong as those of the eternal
hills, ran here and there calling her name.

"Louder, louder!" she called back in an ecstasy.

Something dropped and tinkled against the fender. It was one of her
hairpins. One side of her hair was in a loose tumble; she threw up the
small head on the superb thick neck.

"Louder!--I cannot hear! Once more--"

The throwing up of her head that had brought down the rest of her hair
had given her a glimpse of herself in the glass over the mantelpiece. For
the last time that formidable "Beware!" sounded like thunder in her ears;
the next moment she had snapped with her fingers the ribbon that was
cutting into her throbbing throat. He with the torso and those shoulders
was seeking her ... how should he know her in that dreary garret, in
those joyless habiliments? He would as soon known his Own in that
crimson-bodiced, wire-framed dummy by the window yonder!...

Her fingers clutched at the tawdry mercerised silk of her blouse. There
was a rip, and her arms and throat were free. She panted as she tugged
at something that gave with a short "click-click," as of steel
fastenings; something fell against the fender.... These also.... She tore
at them, and kicked them as they lay about her feet as leaves lie about
the trunk of a tree in autumn....

"Ah!"

And as she stood there, as if within the screen of a spectrum that
deepened to the band of red, her eyes fell on the leopard-skin at her
feet. She caught it up, and in doing so saw purple grapes--purple
grapes that issued from the mouth of a paper bag on the table. With the
dappled pelt about her she sprang forward. The juice spurted through them
into the mass of her loosened hair. Down her body there was a spilth of
seeds and pulp. She cried hoarsely aloud.

"Once more--oh, answer me! Tell me my name!"

Ed's steps were heard on the oilclothed portion of the staircase.

"My name--oh, my name!" she cried in an agony of suspense.... "Oh, they
will not wait for me! They have lighted the torches--they run up and down
the shore with torches--oh, cannot you see me?..."

Suddenly she dashed to the chair on which the litter of linings and
tissue-paper lay. She caught up a double handful and crammed them on the
fire. They caught and flared. There was a call upon the stairs, and the
sound of somebody mounting in haste.

"Once--once only--my name!"

The soul of the Bacchante rioted, struggled to escape from her eyes. Then
as the door was flung open, she heard, and gave a terrifying shout of
recognition.

"I hear--I almost hear--but once more.... IO! _Io, Io, Io!_"

Ed, in the doorway, stood for one moment agape; the next, ignorant of the
full purport of his own words--ignorant that though man may come
westwards he may yet bring his worship with him--ignorant that to make
the Dream the Reality and the Reality the Dream is Heaven's dreadfullest
favour--and ignorant that, that Edge once crossed, there is no return to
the sanity and sweetness and light that are only seen clearly in the
moment when they are lost for ever--he had dashed down the stairs crying
in a voice hoarse and high with terror:

"She's mad! She's mad!"


THE ACCIDENT


I

The street had not changed so much but that, little by little, its
influence had come over Romarin again; and as the clock a street or two
away had struck seven he had stood, his hands folded on his stick, first
curious, then expectant, and finally, as the sound had died away, oddly
satisfied in his memory. The clock had a peculiar chime, a rather
elaborate one, ending inconclusively on the dominant and followed after
an unusually long interval by the stroke of the hour itself. Not until
its last vibration had become too subtle for his ear had Romarin resumed
the occupation that the pealing of the hour had interrupted.

It was an occupation that especially tended to abstraction of mind--the
noting in detail of the little things of the street that he had forgotten
with such completeness that they awakened only tardy responses in his
memory now that his eyes rested on them again. The shape of a
doorknocker, the grouping of an old chimney-stack, the crack, still
there, in a flagstone--somewhere deep in the past these things had
associations; but they lay very deep, and the disturbing of them gave
Romarin a curious, desolate feeling, as of returning to things he had
long out-grown.

But, as he continued to stare at the objects, the sluggish memories
roused more and more; and for each bit of the old that reasserted itself
scores of yards of the new seemed to disappear. New shop-frontages went;
a wall, brought up flush where formerly a recess had been, became the
recess once more; the intermittent electric sign at the street's end,
that wrote in green and crimson the name of a whiskey across a lamp-lit
façade, ceased to worry his eyes; and the unfamiliar new front of the
little restaurant he was passing and repassing took on its old and
well-known aspect again.

Seven o'clock. He had thought, in dismissing his hansom, that it had been
later. His appointment was not until a quarter past. But he decided
against entering the restaurant and waiting inside; seeing who his guest
was, it would be better to wait at the door. By the light of the
restaurant window he corrected his watch, and then sauntered a few yards
along the street, to where men were moving flats of scenery from a back
door of the new theatre into a sort of tumbril. The theatre was twenty
years old, but to Romarin it was "the new theatre." There had been no
theatre there in his day.

In his day!... His day had been twice twenty years before. Forty years
before, that street, that quarter, had been bound up in his life. He had
not, forty years ago, been the famous painter, honoured, decorated, taken
by the arm by monarchs; he had been a student, wild and raw as any, with
that tranquil and urbane philosophy that had made his success still in
abeyance within him. As his eyes had rested on the doorknocker next to
the restaurant a smile had crossed his face. How had _that_ door-knocker
come to be left by the old crowd that had wrenched off so many others? By
what accident had _that_ survived, to bring back all the old life now so
oddly? He stood, again smiling, his hands folded on his stick. A Crown
Prince had given him that stick, and had had it engraved, "To my Friend,
Romarin."

"You oughtn't to be here, you know," he said to the door-knocker. "If I
didn't get you, Marsden ought to have done so...."

It was Marsden whom Romarin had come to meet--Marsden, of whom he had
thought with such odd persistency lately. Marsden was the only man in the
world between whom and himself lay as much as the shadow of an enmity;
and even that faint shadow was now passing. One does not guard, for forty
years, animosities that take their rise in quick outbreaks of the young
blood; and, now that Romarin came to think of it, he hadn't really hated
Marsden for more than a few months. It had been within those very doors
(Romarin was passing the restaurant again) that there had been that quick
blow, about a girl, and the tables had been pushed hastily back, and he
and Marsden had fought, while the other fellows had kept the waiters
away.... And Romarin was now sixty-four, and Marsden must be a year
older, and the girl--who knew?--probably dead long ago ... Yes, time
heals these things, thank God; and Romarin had felt a genuine flush of
pleasure when Marsden had accepted his invitation to dinner.

But--Romarin looked at his watch again--it was rather like Marsden to be
late. Marsden had always been like that--had come and gone pretty much as
he had pleased, regardless of inconvenience to others. But, doubtless, he
had had to walk. If all reports were true, Marsden had not made very much
of his life in the way of worldly success, and Romarin, sorry to hear it,
had wished he could give him a leg-up. Even a good man cannot do much
when the current of his life sets against him in a tide of persistent
ill-luck, and Romarin, honoured and successful, yet knew that he had been
one of the lucky ones....

But it was just like Marsden to be late, for all that.

At first Romarin did not recognise him when he turned the corner of the
street and walked towards him. He hadn't made up his mind beforehand
exactly how he had expected Marsden to look, but he was conscious that he
didn't look it. It was not the short stubble of grey beard, so short that
it seemed to hesitate between beard and unshavenness; it was not the
figure nor carriage--clothes alter that, and the clothes of the man who
was advancing to meet Romarin were, to put it bluntly, shabby; nor was
it... but Romarin did not know what it was in the advancing figure that
for the moment found no response in his memory. He was already within
half a dozen yards of the men who were moving the scenery from the
theatre into the tumbril, and one of the workmen put up his hand as the
edge of a fresh "wing" appeared....

But at the sound of his voice the same thing happened that had happened
when the clock had struck seven. Romarin found himself suddenly
expectant, attentive, and then again curiously satisfied in his memory.
Marsden's voice at least had not changed; it was as in the old days--a
little envious, sarcastic, accepting lower interpretations somewhat
willingly, somewhat grudging of better ones. It completed the taking back
of Romarin that the chiming of the clock, the doorknocker, the grouping
of the chimney-stack and the crack in the flagstone had begun.

"Well, my distinguished Academician, my--"

Marsden's voice sounded across the group of scene-shifters...

"_'Alf_ a mo, _if_ you please, guv'nor," said another voice...

For a moment the painted "wing" shut them off from one another.

       *       *       *       *       *

In that moment Romarin's accident befell him. If its essential nature is
related in arbitrary terms, it is that there are no other terms to relate
it in. It is a decoded cipher, which can be restored to its cryptic form
as Romarin subsequently restored it.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the painter took Marsden's arm and entered the restaurant, he noticed
that while the outside of the place still retained traces of the old, its
inside was entirely new. Its cheap glittering wall-mirrors, that gave a
false impression of the actual size of the place, its Loves and
Shepherdesses painted in the style of the carts of the vendors of
ice-cream, its hat-racks and its four-bladed propeller that set the air
slowly in motion at the farther end of the room, might all have been
matched in a dozen similar establishments within hail of a cab-whistle.
Its gelatine-written menu-cards announced that one might dine there _à
la carte_ or _table d'hôte_ for two shillings. Neither the cooking nor
the service had influenced Romarin in his choice of a place to dine at.

He made a gesture to the waiter who advanced to help him on with his coat
that Marsden was to be assisted first; but Marsden, with a grunted "All
right," had already helped himself. A glimpse of the interior of the coat
told Romarin why Marsden kept waiters at arm's-length. A little twinge of
compunction took him that his own overcoat should be fur-collared and
lined with silk.

They sat down at a corner table not far from the slowly moving
four-bladed propeller.

"Now we can talk," Romarin said. "I'm glad, glad to see you again,
Marsden."

It was a peculiarly vicious face that he saw, corrugated about the brows,
and with stiff iron-grey hair untrimmed about the ears. It shocked
Romarin a little; he had hardly looked to see certain things so
accentuated by the passage of time. Romarin's own brow was high and bald
and benign, and his beard was like a broad shield of silver.

"You're glad, are you?" said Marsden, as they sat down facing one
another. "Well, I'm glad--to be seen with you. It'll revive my credit a
bit. There's a fellow across there has recognised you already by your
photographs in the papers.... I assume I may...?"

He made a little upward movement of his hand. It was a gin and
bitters Marsden assumed he might have. Romarin ordered it; he himself
did not take one. Marsden tossed down the _apéritif_ at one gulp; then
he reached for his roll, pulled it to pieces, and--Romarin remembered
how in the old days Marsden had always eaten bread like that--began to
throw bullets of bread into his mouth. Formerly this habit had irritated
Romarin intensely; now ... well, well, Life uses some of us better than
others. Small blame to these if they throw up the struggle. Marsden, poor
devil ... but the arrival of the soup interrupted Romarin's meditation.
He consulted the violet-written card, ordered the succeeding courses, and
the two men ate for some minutes in silence.

"Well," said Romarin presently, pushing away his plate and wiping his
white moustache, "are you still a Romanticist, Marsden?"

Marsden, who had tucked his napkin between two of the buttons of his
frayed waistcoat, looked suspiciously across the glass with the dregs of
the gin and bitters that he had half raised to his lips.

"Eh?" he said. "I say, Romarin, don't let's go grave-digging among
memories merely for the sake of making conversation. Yours may be
pleasant, but I'm not in the habit of wasting much time over mine.
Might as well be making new ones ... I'll drink whiskey and soda."

It was brought, a large one; and Marsden, nodding, took a deep gulp.

"Health," he said.

"Thanks," said Romarin--instantly noting that the monosyllable, which
matched the other's in curtness, was not at all the reply he had
intended. "Thank you--yours," he amended; and a short pause followed, in
which fish was brought.

This was not what Romarin had hoped for. He had desired to be reconciled
with Marsden, not merely to be allowed to pay for his dinner. Yet if
Marsden did not wish to talk it was difficult not to defer to his wish.
It was true that he had asked if Marsden was still a Romanticist largely
for the sake of something to say; but Marsden's prompt pointing out of
this was not encouraging. Now that he came to think of it, he had never
known precisely what Marsden had meant by the word "Romance" he had so
frequently taken into his mouth; he only knew that this creed of
Romanticism, whatever it was, had been worn rather challengingly, a chip
on the shoulder, to be knocked off at some peril or other. And it had
seemed to Romarin a little futile in the violence with which it had been
maintained ... But that was neither here nor there. The point was, that
the conversation had begun not very happily, and must be mended at once
if at all. To mend it, Romarin leaned across the table.

"Be as friendly as I am, Marsden," he said. "I think--pardon me--that if
our positions were reversed, and I saw in you the sincere desire to help
that I have, I'd take it in the right way." Again Marsden looked
suspiciously at him. "To help? How to help?" he demanded "That's what I
should like you to tell me. But I suppose (for example) you still work?"

"Oh, my work!" Marsden made a little gesture of contempt. "Try again,
Romarin."

"You don't do any?... Come, I'm no bad friend to my friends, and you'll
find me--especially so."

But Marsden put up his hand.

"Not quite so quickly," he said. "Let's see what you mean by help first.
Do you really mean that you want me to borrow money from you? That's help
as I understand it nowadays."

"Then you've changed," said Romarin--wondering, however, in his secret
heart whether Marsden had changed very much in that respect after all.

Marsden gave a short honk of a laugh.

"You didn't suppose I hadn't changed, did you?" Then he leaned suddenly
forward. "This is rather a mistake, Romarin--rather a mistake," he said.

"What is?"

"This--our meeting again. Quite a mistake."

Romarin sighed. "I had hoped not," he said.

Marsden leaned forward again, with another gesture Romarin remembered
very well--dinner knife in hand, edge and palm upwards, punctuating
and expounding with the point.

"I tell you, it's a mistake," he said, knife and hand balanced. "You
can't reopen things like this. You don't really _want_ to reopen them;
you only want to reopen certain of them; you want to pick and choose
among things, to approve and disapprove. There must have been somewhere
or other something in me you didn't altogether dislike--I can't for the
life of me think what it was, by the way; and you want to lay stress on
that and to sink the rest. Well, you can't. I won't let you. I'll not
submit my life to you like that. If you want to go into things, all
right; but it must be all or none. And I'd like another drink."

He put the knife down with a little clap as Romarin beckoned to the
waiter.

There was distress on Romarin's face. He was not conscious of having
adopted a superior attitude. But again he told himself that he must make
allowances. Men who don't come off in Life's struggle are apt to be
touchy, and he was; after all, the same old Marsden, the man with whom he
desired to be at peace.

"Are you quite fair to me?" he asked presently, in a low voice.

Again the knife was taken up and its point advanced.

"Yes, I am," said Marsden in a slightly raised voice; and he indicated
with the knife the mirror at the end of the table. "You know you've done
well, and I, to all appearances, haven't; you can't look at that glass
and not know it. But I've followed the line of my development too, no
less logically than you. My life's been mine, and I'm not going to
apologise for it to a single breathing creature. More, I'm proud of it.
At least, there's been singleness of intention about it. So I think I'm
strictly fair in pointing that out when you talk about helping me."

"Perhaps so, perhaps so," Romarin agreed a little sadly. "It's your tone
more than anything else that makes things a little difficult. Believe me,
I've no end in my mind except pure friendliness."

"No-o-o," said Marsden--a long "no" that seemed to deliberate, to
examine, and finally to admit. "No. I believe that. And you usually get
what you set out for. Oh yes. I've watched your rise--I've made a point
of watching it. It's been a bit at a time, but you've got there. You're
that sort. It's on your forehead--your destiny."

Romarin smiled.

"Hallo, that's new, isn't it?" he said. "It wasn't your habit to talk
much about destiny, if I remember rightly. Let me see; wasn't this more
your style--'will, passion, laughs-at-impossibilities and says,' et
cetera--and so forth? Wasn't that it? With always the suspicion not far
away that you did things more from theoretical conviction than real
impulse after all?"

A dispassionate observer would have judged that the words went somewhere
near home. Marsden was scraping together with the edge of his knife the
crumbs of his broken roll. He scraped them into a little square, and then
trimmed the corners. Not until the little pile was shaped to his liking
did he look surlily up.

"Let it rest, Romarin," he said curtly. "Drop it," he added. "Let it
alone. If I begin to talk like that, too, we shall only cut one another
up. Clink glasses--there--and let it alone."

Mechanically Romarin clinked; but his bald brow was perplexed.

"'Cut one another up?'" he repeated.

"Yes. Let it alone."

"'Cut one another up?'" he repeated once more. "You puzzle me entirely."

"Well, perhaps I'm altogether wrong. I only wanted to warn you that I've
dared a good many things in my time. Now drop it."

Romarin had fine brown eyes, under Oriental arched brows. Again they
noted the singularly vicious look of the man opposite. They were full
of mistrust and curiosity, and he stroked his silver beard.

"Drop it?" he said slowly ... "No, let's go on. I want to hear more of
this."

"I'd much rather have another drink in peace and quietness.... Waiter!"

Either leaned back in his chair, surveying the other. "You're a perverse
devil still," was Romarin's thought. Marsden's, apparently, was of
nothing but the whiskey and soda the waiter had gone to fetch.

       *       *       *       *       *

Romarin was inclined to look askance at a man who could follow up a gin
and bitters with three or four whiskeys and soda without turning a hair.
It argued the seasoned cask. Marsden had bidden the waiter leave the
bottle and the syphon on the table, and was already mixing himself
another stiff peg.

"Well," he said, "since you will have it so--to the old days."

"To the old days," said Romarin, watching him gulp it down.

"Queer, looking back across all that time at 'em, isn't it? How do you
feel about it?"

"In a mixed kind of way, I think; the usual thing: pleasure and regret
mingled."

"Oh, you have regrets, have you?"

"For certain things, yes. Not, let me say, my turn-up with you, Marsden,"
he laughed. "That's why I chose the old place--" he gave a glance
round at its glittering newness. "Do you happen to remember what all that
was about? I've only the vaguest idea."

Marsden gave him a long look. "That all?" he asked.

"Oh, I remember in a sort of way. That 'Romantic' soap-bubble of yours
was really at the bottom of it, I suspect. Tell me," he smiled, "did you
really suppose Life could be lived on those mad lines you used to lay
down?"

"My life," said Marsden calmly, "has been."

"Not literally."

"Literally."

"You mean to say that you haven't outgrown _that_?"

"I hope not."

Romarin had thrown up his handsome head. "Well, well!" he murmured
incredulously.

"Why 'well, well'?" Marsden demanded.... "But, of course, you never did
and never will know what I meant."

"By Romance? ... No, I can't say that I did; but as I conceived it, it
was something that began in appetite and ended in diabetes."

"Not philosophic, eh?" Marsden inquired, picking up a chicken bone.

"Highly unphilosophic," said Romarin, shaking his head.

"Hm!" grunted Marsden, stripping the bone... "Well, I grant it pays in a
different way."

"It does pay, then?" Romarin asked.

"Oh yes, it pays."

The restaurant had filled up. It was one frequented by young artists,
musicians, journalists and the clingers to the rather frayed fringes of
the Arts. From time to time heads were turned to look at Romarin's portly
and handsome figure, which the Press, the Regent Street photographic
establishments, and the Academy Supplements had made well known. The
plump young Frenchwoman within the glazed cash office near the door,
at whom Marsden had several times glanced in a way at which Romarin had
frowned, was aware of the honour done the restaurant; and several times
the blond-bearded proprietor had advanced and inquired with concern
whether the dinner and the service was to the liking of M'sieu.

And the eyes that were turned to Romarin plainly wondered who the
scallawag dining with him might be.

Since Romarin had chosen that their conversation should be of the old
days, and without picking and choosing, Marsden was quite willing that
it should be so. Again he was casting the bullets of bread into his
mouth, and again Romarin was conscious of irritation. Marsden, too,
noticed it; but in awaiting the _rôti_ he still continued to roll and
bolt the pellets, washing them down with gulps of whiskey and soda.

"Oh yes, it paid," he resumed. "Not in that way, of course--" he
indicated the head, quickly turned away again, of an aureoled youngster
with a large bunch of black satin tie, "--not in admiration of that
sort, but in other ways--"

"Tell me about it."

"Certainly, if you want it. But you're my host. Won't you let me hear
your side of it all first?"

"But I thought you said you knew that--had followed my career?"

"So I have. It's not your list of honours and degrees; let me see, what
are you? R.A., D.C.L., Doctor of Literature, whatever that means, and
Professor of this, that, and the other, and not at the end of it yet. I
know all that. I don't say you haven't earned it; I admire your painting;
but it's not that. I want to know what it _feels_ like to be up there
where you are."

It was a childish question, and Romarin felt foolish in trying to answer
it. Such things were the things the adoring aureoled youngster a table or
two away would have liked to ask. Romarin recognised in Marsden the old
craving for sensation; it was part of the theoretical creed Marsden had
made for himself, of doing things, not for their own sakes, but in order
that he might have done them. Of course, it had appeared to a fellow like
that, that Romarin himself had always had a calculated end in view; he
had not; Marsden merely measured Romarin's peck out of his own bushel. It
had been Marsden who, in self-consciously seeking his own life, had lost
it, and Romarin was more than a little inclined to suspect that the
vehemence with which he protested that he had not lost it was precisely
the measure of the loss.

But he essayed it--essayed to give Marsden a _résumé_ of his career. He
told him of the stroke of sheer luck that had been the foundation of it
all, the falling ill of another painter who had turned over certain
commissions to him. He told him of his poor but happy marriage, and of
the windfall, not large, but timely, that had come to his wife. He told
him of fortunate acquaintanceships happily cultivated, of his first
important commission, of the fresco that had procured for him his
Associateship, of his sale to the Chantrey, and of his quietly
remunerative Visitorships and his work on Boards and Committees.

And as he talked, Marsden drew his empty glass to him, moistened his
finger with a little spilt liquid, and began to run the finger round the
rim of the glass. They had done that formerly, a whole roomful of them,
producing, when each had found the note of his instrument, a high, thin,
intolerable singing. To this singing Romarin strove to tell his tale.

But that thin and bat-like note silenced him. He ended lamely, with some
empty generalisation on success.

"Ah, but success in what?" Marsden demanded, interrupting his playing on
the glass for a moment.

"In your aim, whatever it may be."

"Ah!" said Marsden, resuming his performance.

Romarin had sought in his recital to minimise differences in
circumstances; but Marsden seemed bent on aggravating them. He had the
miserable advantage of the man who has nothing to lose. And bit by bit,
Romarin had begun to realise that he was going considerably more than
halfway to meet this old enemy of his, and that amity seemed as far on as
ever. In his heart he began to feel the foreknowledge that their meeting
could have no conclusion. He hated the man, the look of his face and the
sound of his voice, as much as ever.

The proprietor approached with profoundest apology in his attitude.
M'sieu would pardon him, but the noise of the glass ... it was
annoying ... another M'sieu had made complaint....

"Eh?..." cried Marsden. "Oh, that! Certainly! It can be put to a much
better purpose."

He refilled the glass.

The liquor had begun to tell on him. A quarter of the quantity would have
made a clean-living man incapably drunk, but it had only made Marsden's
eyes bright. He gave a sarcastic laugh.

"And is that all?" he asked.

Romarin replied shortly that that was all.

"You've missed out the R.A., and the D.C.L."

"Then let me add that I'm a Doctor of Civil Law and a full Member of the
Royal Academy," said Romarin, almost at the end of his patience. "And
now, since you don't think much of it, may I hear your own account?"

"Oh, by all means. I don't know, however, that--" he broke off to throw a
glance at a woman who had just entered the restaurant--a divesting glance
that caused Romarin to redden to his crown and drop his eyes. "I was
going to say that you may think as little of my history as I do of yours.
Supple woman that; when the rather scraggy blonde does take it into her
head to be a devil she's the worst kind there is...."

Without apology Romarin looked at his watch.

"All right," said Marsden, smiling, "for what _I've_ got out of life,
then. But I warn you, it's entirely discreditable."

Romarin did not doubt it.

"But it's mine, and I boast of it. I've done--barring receiving honours
and degrees--everything--everything! If there's anything I haven't done,
tell me and lend me a sovereign, and I'll go and do it."

"You haven't told the story."

"That's so. Here goes then ... Well, you know, unless you've forgotten,
how I began...."

Fruit and nutshells and nutcrackers lay on the table between them, and at
the end of it, shielded from draughts by the menu cards, the coffee
apparatus simmered over its elusive blue flame. Romarin was taking the
rind from a pear with a table-knife, and Marsden had declined port in
favour of a small golden liqueur of brandy. Every seat in the restaurant
was now occupied, and the proprietor himself had brought his finest
cigarettes and cigars. The waiter poured out the coffee, and departed
with the apparatus in one hand and his napkin in the other.

Marsden was already well into his tale...

The frightful unction with which he told it appalled Romarin. It was as
he had said--there was nothing he had not done and did not exult in with
a sickening exultation. It had, indeed, ended in diabetes. In the pitiful
hunting down of sensation to the last inch he had been fiendishly
ingenious and utterly unimaginative. His unholy curiosity had spared
nothing, his unnatural appetite had known no truth. It was grinning sin.
The details of it simply cannot be told....

And his vanity in it all was prodigious. Romarin was pale as he listened.
What! In order that _this_ malignant growth in Society's breast should
be able to say "I know," had sanctities been profaned, sweet conventions
assailed, purity blackened, soundness infected, and all that was bright
and of the day been sunk in the quagmire that this creature of the night
had called--yes, stilled called--by the gentle name of Romance? Yes,
so it had been. Not only had men and women suffered dishonour, but
manhood and womanhood and the clean institutions by which alone the
creature was suffered to exist had been brought to shame. And what was he
to look at when it was all done?...

"Romance--Beauty--the Beauty of things as they are!" he croaked.

If faces in the restaurant were now turned to Romarin, it was the horror
on Romarin's own face that drew them. He drew out his handkerchief and
mopped his brow.

"But," he stammered presently, "you are speaking of
generalities--horrible theories--things diabolically conceivable
to be done--"

"What?" cried Marsden, checked for a moment in his horrible triumph. "No,
by God! I've done 'em, done 'em! Don't you understand? If you don't,
question me!..."

"No, no!" cried Romarin.

"But I say yes! You came for this, and you shall have it! I tried to stop
you, but you wanted it, and by God you shall have it! You think your
life's been full and mine empty? Ha ha!... Romance! I had the conviction
of it, and I've had the courage too! I haven't told you a tenth of it!
What would you like? Chamber-windows when Love was hot? The killing of a
man who stood in my way? (I've fought a duel, and killed.) The squeezing
of the juice out of life like _that_?" He pointed to Romarin's plate;
Romarin had been eating grapes. "Did you find me saying I'd do a thing
and then drawing back from it when we--" he made a quick gesture of both
hands towards the middle of the restaurant floor.

"When we fought--?"

"Yes, when we fought, here!... Oh no, oh no! I've lived, I tell you,
every moment! Not a title, not a degree, but I've lived such a life as
you never dreamed of--!"

"Thank God--"

But suddenly Marsden's voice, which had risen, dropped again. He began to
shake with interior chuckles. They were the old, old chuckles, and they
filled Romarin with a hatred hardly to be borne. The sound of the
animal's voice had begun it, and his every word, look, movement,
gesture, since they had entered the restaurant, had added to it. And he
was now chuckling, chuckling, shaking with chuckles, as if some
monstrous tit-bit still remained to be told. Already Romarin had tossed
aside his napkin, beckoned to the waiter, and said, "M'sieu dines
with me...."

"Ho ho ho ho!" came the drunken sounds. "It's a long time since M'sieu
dined here with his old friend Romarin! Do you remember the last time? Do
you remember it? _Pif, pan_! Two smacks across the table, Romarin--oh,
you got it in very well!--and then, _brrrrr_! quick! Back with the
tables--all the fellows round--Farquharson for me and Smith for you, and
then to it, Romarin!... And you really don't remember what it was all
about?..."

Romarin had remembered. His face was not the face of the philosophic
master of Life now.

"You said she shouldn't--little Pattie Hines you know--you said she
shouldn't--"

Romarin sprang half from his chair, and brought his fist down on the
table.

"And by Heaven, she didn't! At least that's one thing you haven't done!"

Marsden too had risen unsteadily.

"Oho, oho? You think that?"

A wild thought flashed across Romarin's brain.

"You mean--?"

"I mean?... Oho, oho! Yes, I mean! She did, Romarin...."

The mirrors, mistily seen through the smoke of half a hundred cigars and
cigarettes, the Loves and Shepherdesses of the garish walls, the diners
starting up in their places, all suddenly seemed to swing round in a
great half-circle before Romarin's eyes. The next moment, feeling as if
he stood on something on which he found it difficult to keep his balance,
he had caught up the table-knife with which he had peeled the pear and
had struck at the side of Marsden's neck. The rounded blade snapped, but
he struck again with the broken edge, and left the knife where it
entered. The table appeared uptilted almost vertical; over it Marsden's
head disappeared; it was followed by a shower of glass, cigars,
artificial flowers and the tablecloth at which he clutched; and the
dirty American cloth of the table top was left bare.

       *       *       *       *       *

But the edge behind which Marsden's face had disappeared remained
vertical. A group of scene-shifters were moving a flat of scenery from a
theatre into a tumbril-like cart...

And Romarin knew that, past, present, and future, he had seen it all in
an instant, and that Marsden stood behind that painted wing.

And he knew, too, that he had only to wait until that flat passed and to
take Marsden's arm and enter the restaurant, _and it would be so_. A
drowning man is said to see all in one unmeasurable instant of time; a
year-long dream is but, they say, an instantaneous arrangement in the
moment of waking of the molecules we associate with ideas; and the past
of history and the future of prophecy are folded up in the mystic moment
we call the present....

_It would come true_....

For one moment Romarin stood; the next, he had turned and run for his
life.

At the corner of the street he collided with a loafer, and only the wall
saved them from going down. Feverishly Romarin plunged his hand into his
pocket and brought out a handful of silver. He crammed it into the
loafer's hand.

"Here--quick--take it!" he gasped. "There's a man there, by that
restaurant door--he's waiting for Mr. Romarin--tell him--tell him--tell
him Mr. Romarin's had an accident--"

And he dashed away, leaving the man looking at the silver in his palm.


THE CIGARETTE CASE


"A cigarette, Loder?" I said, offering my case. For the moment Loder was
not smoking; for long enough he had not been talking.

"Thanks," he replied, taking not only the cigarette, but the case also.
The others went on talking; Loder became silent again; but I noticed
that he kept my cigarette case in his hand, and looked at it from time to
time with an interest that neither its design nor its costliness seemed
to explain. Presently I caught his eye.

"A pretty case," he remarked, putting it down on the table. "I once had
one exactly like it."

I answered that they were in every shop window.

"Oh yes," he said, putting aside any question of rarity.... "I lost
mine."

"Oh?..."

He laughed. "Oh, that's all right--I got it back again--don't be afraid
I'm going to claim yours. But the way I lost it--found it--the whole
thing--was rather curious. I've never been able to explain it. I wonder
if you could?"

I answered that I certainly couldn't till I'd heard it, whereupon Loder,
taking up the silver case again and holding it in his hand as he talked,
began:

"This happened in Provence, when I was about as old as Marsham there--and
every bit as romantic. I was there with Carroll--you remember poor old
Carroll and what a blade of a boy he was--as romantic as four Marshams
rolled into one. (Excuse me, Marsham, won't you? It's a romantic tale,
you see, or at least the setting is.) ... We were in Provence, Carroll
and I; twenty-four or thereabouts; romantic, as I say; and--and this
happened.

"And it happened on the top of a whole lot of other things, you must
understand, the things that do happen when you're twenty-four. If it
hadn't been Provence, it would have been somewhere else, I suppose,
nearly, if not quite as good; but this was Provence, that smells (as you
might say) of twenty-four as it smells of argelasse and wild lavender and
broom....

"We'd had the dickens of a walk of it, just with knapsacks--had started
somewhere in the Ardèche and tramped south through the vines and almonds
and olives--Montélimar, Orange, Avignon, and a fortnight at that blanched
skeleton of a town, Les Baux. We'd nothing to do, and had gone just where
we liked, or rather just where Carroll had liked; and Carroll had had the
_De Bello Gallico_ in his pocket, and had had a notion, I fancy, of
taking in the whole ground of the Roman conquest--I remember he lugged me
off to some place or other, Pourrières I believe its name was, because--I
forget how many thousands--were killed in a river-bed there, and they
stove in the water-casks so that if the men wanted water they'd have to
go forward and fight for it. And then we'd gone on to Arles, where
Carroll had fallen in love with everything that had a bow of black
velvet in her hair, and after that Tarascon, Nîmes, and so on, the usual
round--I won't bother you with that. In a word, we'd had two months of
it, eating almonds and apricots from the trees, watching the women at the
communal washing-fountains under the dark plane-trees, singing _Magali_
and the _Qué Cantes_, and Carroll yarning away all the time about Caesar
and Vercingetorix and Dante, and trying to learn Provençal so that he
could read the stuff in the _Journal des Félibriges_ that he'd never have
looked at if it had been in English....

"Well, we got to Darbisson. We'd run across some young chap or
other--Rangon his name was--who was a vine-planter in those parts, and
Rangon had asked us to spend a couple of days with him, with him and his
mother, if we happened to be in the neighbourhood. So as we might as
well happen to be there as anywhere else, we sent him a postcard and
went. This would be in June or early in July. All day we walked across
a plain of vines, past hurdles of wattled _cannes_ and great wind-screens
of velvety cypresses, sixty feet high, all white with dust on the north
side of 'em, for the mistral was having its three-days' revel, and it
whistled and roared through the _cannes_ till scores of yards of 'em
at a time were bowed nearly to the earth. A roaring day it was, I
remember.... But the wind fell a little late in the afternoon, and we
were poring over what it had left of our Ordnance Survey--like fools,
we'd got the unmounted paper maps instead of the linen ones--when Rangon
himself found us, coming out to meet us in a very badly turned-out trap.
He drove us back himself, through Darbisson, to the house, a mile and a
half beyond it, where he lived with his mother.

"He spoke no English, Rangon didn't, though, of course, both French and
Provençal; and as he drove us, there was Carroll, using him as a
Franco-Provençal dictionary, peppering him with questions about the names
of things in the patois--I beg its pardon, the language--though there's
a good deal of my eye and Betty Martin about that, and I fancy this
Félibrige business will be in a good many pieces when Frédéric Mistral
is under that Court-of-Love pavilion arrangement he's had put up for
himself in the graveyard at Maillanne. If the language has got to go,
well, it's got to go, I suppose; and while I personally don't want to
give it a kick, I rather sympathise with the Government. Those jaunts of
a Sunday out to Les Baux, for instance, with paper lanterns and Bengal
fire and a fellow spouting _O blanche Venus d'Arles_--they're well
enough, and compare favourably with our Bank Holidays and Sunday League
picnics, but ... but that's nothing to do with my tale after all.... So
he drove on, and by the time we got to Rangon's house Carroll had learned
the greater part of _Magali_....

"As you, no doubt, know, it's a restricted sort of life in some respects
that a young _vigneron_ lives in those parts, and it was as we reached
the house that Rangon remembered something--or he might have been trying
to tell us as we came along for all I know, and not been able to get a
word in edgeways for Carroll and his Provençal. It seemed that his mother
was away from home for some days--apologies of the most profound, of
course; our host was the soul of courtesy, though he did try to get at
us a bit later.... We expressed our polite regrets, naturally; but I
didn't quite see at first what difference it made. I only began to see
when Rangon, with more apologies, told us that we should have to go back
to Darbisson for dinner. It appeared that when Madame Rangon went away
for a few days she dispersed the whole of the female side of her
establishment also, and she'd left her son with nobody to look after
him except an old man we'd seen in the yard mending one of these
double-cylindered sulphur-sprinklers they clap across the horse's back
and drive between the rows of vines.... Rangon explained all this as we
stood in the hall drinking an _apéritif_--a hall crowded with oak
furniture and photographs and a cradle-like bread-crib and doors opening
to right and left to the other rooms of the ground floor. He had also, it
seemed, to ask us to be so infinitely obliging as to excuse him for one
hour after dinner--our postcard had come unexpectedly, he said, and
already he had made an appointment with his agent about the _vendange_
for the coming autumn.... We, begged him, of course, not to allow us to
interfere with his business in the slightest degree. He thanked us a
thousand times.

"'But though we dine in the village, we will take our own wine with us,'
he said, 'a wine _surfin_--one of my wines--you shall see--'

"Then he showed us round his place--I forget how many hundreds of acres
of vines, and into the great building with the presses and pumps and
casks and the huge barrel they call the thunderbolt--and about seven
o'clock we walked back to Darbisson to dinner, carrying our wine with us.
I think the restaurant we dined in was the only one in the place, and our
gaillard of a host--he was a straight-backed, well-set-up chap, with
rather fine eyes--did us on the whole pretty well. His wine certainly was
good stuff, and set our tongues going....

"A moment ago I said a fellow like Rangon leads a restricted sort of life
in those parts. I saw this more clearly as dinner went on. We dined by an
open window, from which we could see the stream with the planks across it
where the women washed clothes during the day and assembled in the
evening for gossip. There were a dozen or so of them there as we dined,
laughing and chatting in low tones--they all seemed pretty--it was
quickly falling dusk--all the girls are pretty then, and are quite
conscious of it--_you_ know, Marsham. Behind them, at the end of the
street, one of these great cypress wind-screens showed black against the
sky, a ragged edge something like the line the needle draws on a rainfall
chart; and you could only tell whether they were men or women under the
plantains by their voices rippling and chattering and suddenly a deeper
note.... Once I heard a muffled scuffle and a sound like a kiss.... It
was then that Rangon's little trouble came out....

"It seemed that he didn't know any girls--wasn't allowed to know any
girls. The girls of the village were pretty enough, but you see how it
was--he'd a position to keep up--appearances to maintain--couldn't be
familiar during the year with the girls who gathered his grapes for him
in the autumn.... And as soon as Carroll gave him a chance, _he_ began to
ask _us_ questions, about England, English girls, the liberty they had,
and so on.

"Of course, we couldn't tell him much he hadn't heard already, but that
made no difference; he could stand any amount of that, our strapping
young _vigneron_; and he asked us questions by the dozen, that we both
tried to answer at once. And his delight and envy!... What! In England
did the young men see the young women of their own class without
restraint--the sisters of their friends _même_--even at the house? Was it
permitted that they drank tea with them in the afternoon, or went without
invitation to pass the _soirée_?... He had all the later Prévosts in his
room, he told us (I don't doubt he had the earlier ones also); Prévost
and the Disestablishment between them must be playing the mischief
with the convent system of education for young girls; and our young man
was--what d'you call it?--'Co-ed'--co-educationalist--by Jove, yes!... He
seemed to marvel that we should have left a country so blessed as England
to visit his dusty, wild-lavender-smelling, girl-less Provence.... You
don't know half your luck, Marsham....

"Well, we talked after this fashion--we'd left the dining-room of the
restaurant and had planted ourselves on a bench outside with Rangon
between us--when Rangon suddenly looked at his watch and said it was time
he was off to see this agent of his. Would we take a walk, he asked us,
and meet him again there? he said.... But as his agent lived in the
direction of his own home, we said we'd meet him at the house in an hour
or so. Off he went, envying every Englishman who stepped, I don't
doubt.... I told you how old--how young--we were.... Heigho!...

"Well, off goes Rangon, and Carroll and I got up, stretched ourselves,
and took a walk. We walked a mile or so, until it began to get pretty
dark, and then turned; and it was as we came into the blackness of one of
these cypress hedges that the thing I'm telling you of happened. The
hedge took a sharp turn at that point; as we came round the angle we saw
a couple of women's figures hardly more than twenty yards ahead--don't
know how they got there so suddenly, I'm sure; and that same moment I
found my foot on something small and white and glimmering on the grass.

"I picked it up. It was a handkerchief--a woman's--embroidered--

"The two figures ahead of us were walking in our direction; there was
every probability that the handkerchief belonged to one of them; so we
stepped out....

"At my 'Pardon, madame,' and lifted hat one of the figures turned her
head; then, to my surprise, she spoke in English--cultivated English.
I held out the handkerchief. It belonged to the elder lady of the two,
the one who had spoken, a very gentle-voiced old lady, older by very many
years than her companion. She took the handkerchief and thanked me....

"Somebody--Sterne, isn't it?--says that Englishmen don't travel to see
Englishmen. I don't know whether he'd stand to that in the case of
Englishwomen; Carroll and I didn't.... We were walking rather slowly
along, four abreast across the road; we asked permission to introduce
ourselves, did so, and received some name in return which, strangely
enough, I've entirely forgotten--I only remember that the ladies were
aunt and niece, and lived at Darbisson. They shook their heads when I
mentioned M. Rangon's name and said we were visiting him. They didn't
know him....

"I'd never been in Darbisson before, and I haven't been since, so I don't
know the map of the village very well. But the place isn't very big,
and the house at which we stopped in twenty minutes or so is probably
there yet. It had a large double door--a double door in two senses,
for it was a big _porte-cochère_ with a smaller door inside it, and an
iron grille shutting in the whole. The gentle-voiced old lady had already
taken a key from her reticule and was thanking us again for the little
service of the handkerchief; then, with the little gesture one makes when
one has found oneself on the point of omitting a courtesy, she gave a
little musical laugh.

"'But,' she said with a little movement of invitation, 'one sees so
few compatriots here--if you have the time to come in and smoke a
cigarette ... also the cigarette,' she added, with another rippling
laugh, 'for we have few callers, and live alone--'

"Hastily as I was about to accept, Carroll was before me, professing a
nostalgia for the sound of the English tongue that made his recent
protestations about Provençal a shameless hypocrisy. Persuasive young
rascal, Carroll Was--poor chap ... So the elder lady opened the grille
and the wooden door beyond it, and we entered.

"By the light of the candle which the younger lady took from a bracket
just within the door we saw that we were in a handsome hall or vestibule;
and my wonder that Rangon had made no mention of what was apparently a
considerable establishment was increased by the fact that its tenants
must be known to be English and could be seen to be entirely charming. I
couldn't understand it, and I'm afraid hypotheses rushed into my head
that cast doubts on the Rangons--you know--whether _they_ were all right.
We knew nothing about our young planter, you see....

"I looked about me. There were tubs here and there against the walls,
gaily painted, with glossy-leaved aloes and palms in them--one of the
aloes, I remember, was flowering; a little fountain in the middle made a
tinkling noise; we put our caps on a carved and gilt console table; and
before us rose a broad staircase with shallow steps of spotless stone and
a beautiful wrought-iron handrail. At the top of the staircase were more
palms and aloes, and double doors painted in a clear grey.

"We followed our hostesses up the staircase. I can hear yet the sharp
clean click our boots made on that hard shiny stone--see the lights of
the candle gleaming on the handrail ... The young girl--she was not much
more than a girl--pushed at the doors, and we went in.

"The room we entered was all of a piece with the rest for rather
old-fashioned fineness. It was large, lofty, beautifully kept. Carroll
went round for Miss ... whatever her name was ... lighting candles in
sconces; and as the flames crept up they glimmered on a beautifully
polished floor, which was bare except for an Eastern rug here and there.
The elder lady had sat down in a gilt chair, Louis Fourteenth I should
say, with a striped rep of the colour of a petunia; and I really don't
know--don't smile, Smith--what induced me to lead her to it by the
finger-tips, bending over her hand for a moment as she sat down. There
was an old tambour-frame behind her chair, I remember, and a vast oval
mirror with clustered candle-brackets filled the greater part of the
farther wall, the brightest and clearest glass I've ever seen...."

He paused, looking at my cigarette case, which he had taken into his hand
again. He smiled at some recollection or other, and it was a minute or
so before he continued.

"I must admit that I found it a little annoying, after what we'd
been talking about at dinner an hour before, that Rangon wasn't with
us. I still couldn't understand how he could have neighbours so
charming without knowing about them, but I didn't care to insist on
this to the old lady, who for all I knew might have her own reasons
for keeping to herself. And, after all, it was our place to return
Rangon's hospitality in London if he ever came there, not, so to speak,
on his own doorstep.... So presently I forgot all about Rangon, and I'm
pretty sure that Carroll, who was talking to his companion of some
Félibrige junketing or other and having the air of Gounod's _Mireille_
hummed softly over to him, didn't waste a thought on him either. Soon
Carroll--you remember what a pretty crooning, humming voice he had--soon
Carroll was murmuring what they call 'seconds,' but so low that the sound
hardly came across the room; and I came in with a soft bass note from
time to time. No instrument, you know; just an unaccompanied murmur no
louder than an Aeolian harp; and it sounded infinitely sweet and
plaintive and--what shall I say?--weak--attenuated--faint--'pale' you
might almost say--in that formal, rather old-fashioned _salon_, with that
great clear oval mirror throwing back the still flames of the candles in
the sconces on the walls. Outside the wind had now fallen completely; all
was very quiet; and suddenly in a voice not much louder than a sigh,
Carroll's companion was singing _Oft in the Stilly Night_--you know
it...."

He broke off again to murmur the beginning of the air. Then, with a
little laugh for which we saw no reason, he went on again:

"Well, I'm not going to try to convince you of such a special and
delicate thing as the charm of that hour--it wasn't more than an
hour--it would be all about an hour we stayed. Things like that just
have to be said and left; you destroy them the moment you begin to
insist on them; we've every one of us had experiences like that, and
don't say much about them. I was as much in love with my old lady as
Carroll evidently was with his young one--I can't tell you why--being
in love has just to be taken for granted too, I suppose... Marsham
understands.... We smoked our cigarettes, and sang again, once more
filling that clear-painted, quiet apartment with a murmuring no louder
than if a light breeze found that the bells of a bed of flowers were
really bells and played on 'em. The old lady moved her fingers gently
on the round table by the side of her chair,.. oh, infinitely pretty it
was.... Then Carroll wandered off into the _Qué Cantes_--awfully
pretty--'It is not for myself I sing, but for my friend who is near
me'--and I can't tell you how like four old friends we were, those two
so oddly met ladies and Carroll and myself.... And so to _Oft in the
Stilly Night_ again....

"But for all the sweetness and the glamour of it, we couldn't stay on
indefinitely, and I wondered what time it was, but didn't ask--anything
to do with clocks and watches would have seemed a cold and mechanical
sort of thing just then.... And when presently we both got up neither
Carroll nor I asked to be allowed to call again in the morning to
thank them for a charming hour.... And they seemed to feel the same as
we did about it. There was no 'hoping that we should meet again in
London'--neither an au revoir nor a good-bye--just a tacit understanding
that that hour should remain isolated, accepted like a good gift without
looking the gift-horse in the mouth, single, unattached to any hours
before or after--I don't know whether you see what I mean.... Give me a
match somebody....

"And so we left, with no more than looks exchanged and finger-tips
resting between the back of our hands and our lips for a moment. We
found our way out by ourselves, down that shallow-stepped staircase with
the handsome handrail, and let ourselves out of the double door and
grille, closing it softly. We made for the village without speaking a
word.... Heigho!..."

Loder had picked up the cigarette case again, but for all the way his
eyes rested on it I doubt whether he really saw it. I'm pretty sure he
didn't; I knew when he did by the glance he shot at me, as much as to say
"I see you're wondering where the cigarette case comes in."... He
resumed with another little laugh.

"Well," he continued, "we got back to Rangon's house. I really don't
blame Rangon for the way he took it when we told him, you know--he
thought we were pulling his leg, of course, and he wasn't having any; not
he! There were no English ladies in Darbisson, he said.... We told him as
nearly as we could just where the house was--we weren't very precise, I'm
afraid, for the village had been in darkness as we had come through it,
and I had to admit that the cypress hedge I tried to describe where we'd
met our friends was a good deal like other cypress hedges--and, as I say,
Rangon wasn't taking any. I myself was rather annoyed that he should
think we were returning his hospitality by trying to get at him, and it
wasn't very easy either to explain in my French and Carroll's Provençal
that we were going to let the thing stand as it was and weren't going to
call on our charming friends again.... The end of it was that Rangon
just laughed and yawned....

"'I knew it was good, my wine,' he said, 'but--' a shrug said the rest.
'Not so good as all that,' he meant....

"Then he gave us our candles, showed us to our rooms, shook hands, and
marched off to his own room and the Prévosts.

"I dreamed of my old lady half the night.

"After coffee the next morning I put my hand into my pocket for my
cigarette case and didn't find it. I went through all my pockets, and
then I asked Carroll if he'd got it.

"'No,' he replied.... 'Think you left it behind at that place last
night?'

"'Yes; did you?' Rangon popped in with a twinkle.

"I went through all my pockets again. No cigarette case....

"Of course, it was possible that I'd left it behind, and I was annoyed
again. I didn't want to go back, you see.... But, on the other hand, I
didn't want to lose the case--it was a present--and Rangon's smile
nettled me a good deal, too. It was both a challenge to our truthfulness
and a testimonial to that very good wine of his....

"'Might have done,' I grunted.... 'Well, in that case we'll go and get
it.'

"'If one tried the restaurant first--?' Rangon suggested, smiling again.

"'By all means,' said I stuffily, though I remembered having the case
after we'd left the restaurant.

"We were round at the restaurant by half-past nine. The case wasn't
there. I'd known jolly well beforehand it wasn't, and I saw Rangon's
mouth twitching with amusement.

"'So we now seek the abode of these English ladies, _hein_?' he said.

"'Yes,' said I; and we left the restaurant and strode through the village
by the way we'd taken the evening before....

"That vigneron's smile became more and more irritating to me.... 'It is
then the next village?' he said presently, as we left the last house and
came out into the open plain.

"We went back....

"I was irritated because we were two to one, you see, and Carroll backed
me up. 'A double door, with a grille in front of it,' he repeated for
the fiftieth time.... Rangon merely replied that it wasn't our good faith
he doubted. He didn't actually use the word 'drunk.'...

"'_Mais tiens_,' he said suddenly, trying to conceal his mirth. '_Si
c'est possible... si c'est possible_... a double door with a grille? But
perhaps that I know it, the domicile of these so elusive ladies.... Come
this way.'

"He took us back along a plantain-groved street, and suddenly turned up
an alley that was little more than two gutters and a crack of sky
overhead between two broken-tiled roofs. It was a dilapidated, deserted
_ruelle_, and I was positively angry when Rangon pointed to a blistered
old _porte-cochère_ with a half-unhinged railing in front of it.

"'Is it that, your house?' he asked.

"'No,' says I, and 'No,' says Carroll ... and off we started again....

"But another half-hour brought us back to the same place, and Carroll
scratched his head.

"'Who lives there, anyway?' he said, glowering at the _porte-cochère_,
chin forward, hands in pockets.

"'Nobody,' says Rangon, as much as to say 'look at it!' 'M'sieu then
meditates taking it?'...

"Then I struck in, quite out of temper by this time.

"'How much would the rent be?' I asked, as if I really thought of taking
the place just to get back at him.

"He mentioned something ridiculously small in the way of francs.

"'One might at least see the place,' says I. 'Can the key be got?'

"He bowed. The key was at the baker's, not a hundred yards away, he
said....

"We got the key. It was the key of the inner wooden door--that grid of
rusty iron didn't need one--it came clean off its single hinge when
Carroll touched it. Carroll opened, and we stood for a moment motioning
to one another to step in. Then Rangon went in first, and I heard him
murmur 'Pardon, Mesdames.'...

"Now this is the odd part. We passed into a sort of vestibule or hall,
with a burst lead pipe in the middle of a dry tank in the centre of it.
There was a broad staircase rising in front of us to the first floor, and
double doors just seen in the half-light at the head of the stairs. Old
tubs stood against the walls, but the palms and aloes in them were
dead--only a cabbage-stalk or two--and the rusty hoops lay on the ground
about them. One tub had come to pieces entirely and was no more than a
heap of staves on a pile of spilt earth. And everywhere, everywhere was
dust--the floor was an inch deep in dust and old plaster that muffled our
footsteps, cobwebs hung like old dusters on the walls, a regular goblin's
tatter of cobwebs draped the little bracket inside the door, and the
wrought-iron of the hand-rail was closed up with webs in which not even a
spider moved. The whole thing was preposterous....

"'It is possible that for even a less rental--'

"Rangon murmured, dragging his forefinger across the hand-rail and
leaving an inch-deep furrow....

"'Come upstairs,' said I suddenly....

"Up we went. All was in the same state there. A clutter of stuff came
down as I pushed at the double doors of the _salon_, and I had to strike
a stinking French sulphur match to see into the room at all. Underfoot
was like walking on thicknesses of flannel, and except where we put
our feet the place was as printless as a snowfield--dust, dust, unbroken
grey dust. My match burned down....

"'Wait a minute--I've a _bougie_,' said Carroll, and struck the wax
match....

"There were the old sconces, with never a candle-end in them. There was
the large oval mirror, but hardly reflecting Carroll's match for the
dust on it. And the broken chairs were there, all gutless, and the
rickety old round table....

"But suddenly I darted forward. Something new and bright on the table
twinkled with the light of Carroll's match. The match went out, and by
the time Carroll had lighted another I had stopped. I wanted Rangon to
see what was on the table....

"'You'll see by my footprints how far from that table _I've_ been,' I
said. 'Will you pick it up?'

"And Rangon, stepping forward, picked up from the middle of the table--my
cigarette case."

       *       *       *       *       *

Loder had finished. Nobody spoke. For quite a minute nobody spoke, and
then Loder himself broke the silence, turning to me.

"Make anything of it?" he said.

I lifted my eyebrows. "Only your _vigneron's_ explanation--" I began, but
stopped again, seeing that wouldn't do.

"_Any_body make anything of it?" said Loder, turning from one to another.

I gathered from Smith's face that he thought one thing might be made of
it--namely, that Loder had invented the whole tale. But even Smith
didn't speak.

"Were any English ladies ever found to have lived in the place--murdered,
you know--bodies found and all that?" young Marsham asked diffidently,
yearning for an obvious completeness.

"Not that we could ever learn," Loder replied. "We made inquiries
too.... So you all give it up? Well, so do I...."

And he rose. As he walked to the door, myself following him to get his
hat and stick, I heard him humming softly the lines--they are from
_Oft in the Stilly Night_--

"_I seem like one who treads alone
    Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose guests are fled, whose garlands dead,
    And all but he--departed!_"


THE ROCKER


I

There was little need for the swart gipsies to explain, as they stood
knee-deep in the snow round the bailiff of the Abbey Farm, what it
was that had sent them. The unbroken whiteness of the uplands told that,
and, even as they spoke, there came up the hill the dark figures of the
farm men with shovels, on their way to dig out the sheep. In the summer,
the bailiff would have been the first to call the gipsies vagabonds
and roost-robbers; now ... they had women with them too.

"The hares and foxes were down four days ago, and the liquid-manure pumps
like a snow man," the bailiff said.... "Yes, you can lie in the laithes
and welcome--if you can find 'em. Maybe you'll help us find our sheep
too--"

The gipsies had done so. Coming back again, they had had some ado to
discover the spot where their three caravans made a hummock of white
against a broken wall.

The women--they had four women with them--began that afternoon to weave
the mats and baskets they hawked from door to door; and in the forenoon
of the following day one of them, the black-haired, soft-voiced quean
whom the bailiff had heard called Annabel, set her babe in the sling on
her back, tucked a bundle of long cane-loops under her oxter, and trudged
down between eight-foot walls of snow to the Abbey Farm. She stood in the
latticed porch, dark and handsome against the whiteness, and then,
advancing, put her head into the great hall-kitchen.

"Has the lady any chairs for the gipsy woman to mend?" she asked in a
soft and insinuating voice....

They brought her the old chairs; she seated herself on a box in the
porch; and there she wove the strips of cane in and out, securing each
one with a little wooden peg and a tap of her hammer. The child remained
in the sling at her back, taking the breast from time to time over her
shoulder; and the silver wedding ring could be seen as she whipped the
cane, back and forth.

As she worked, she cast curious glances into the old hall-kitchen. The
snow outside cast a pallid, upward light on the heavy ceiling-beams; this
was reflected in the polished stone floor; and the children, who at first
had shyly stopped their play, seeing the strange woman in the porch--the
nearest thing they had seen to gipsies before had been the old itinerant
glazier with his frame of glass on his back--resumed it, but still eyed
her from time to time. In the ancient walnut chair by the hearth sat the
old, old lady who had told them to bring the chairs. Her hair, almost
as white as the snow itself, was piled up on her head _à la Marquise_;
she was knitting; but now and then she allowed the needle in the little
wooden sheath at her waist to lie idle, closed her eyes, and rocked
softly in the old walnut chair.

"Ask the woman who is mending the chairs whether she is warm enough
there," the old lady said to one of the children; and the child went
to the porch with the message.

"Thank you, little missie--thank you, lady dear--Annabel is quite warm,"
said the soft voice; and the child returned to the play.

It was a childish game of funerals at which the children played. The hand
of Death, hovering over the dolls, had singled out Flora, the
articulations of whose sawdust body were seams and whose boots were
painted on her calves of fibrous plaster. For the greater solemnity, the
children had made themselves sweeping trains of the garments of their
elders, and those with cropped curls had draped their heads with shawls,
the fringes of which they had combed out with their fingers to simulate
hair--long hair, such as Sabrina, the eldest, had hanging so low down
her back that she could almost sit on it. A cylindrical-bodied horse,
convertible (when his flat head came out of its socket) into a
locomotive, headed the sad _cortège_; then came the defunct Flora; then
came Jack, the raffish sailor doll, with other dolls; and the children
followed with hushed whisperings.

The youngest of the children passed the high-backed walnut chair in which
the old lady sat. She stopped.

"Aunt Rachel--" she whispered, slowly and gravely opening very wide and
closing very tight her eyes.

"Yes, dear?"

"Flora's dead!"

The old lady, when she smiled, did so less with her lips than with her
faded cheeks. So sweet was her face that you could not help wondering,
when you looked on it, how many men had also looked upon it and loved it.
Somehow, you never wondered how many of them had been loved in return.

"I'm so sorry, dear," Aunt Rachel, who in reality was a great-aunt, said.
"What did she die of this time?"

"She died of ... Brown Titus ... 'n now she's going to be buried in a
grave as little as her bed."

"In a what, dear?"

"As little ... dread ... as little as my bed ... you say it, Sabrina."

"She means, Aunt Rachel,

"_Teach me to live that I may dread
The Grave as little as my bed,_"

Sabrina, the eldest, interpreted.

"Ah!... But won't you play at cheerful things, dears?"

"Yes, we will, presently, Aunt Rachel; gee up, horse!... Shall we go and
ask the chair-woman if she's warm enough?"

"Do, dears."

Again the message was taken, and this time it seemed as if Annabel, the
gipsy, was not warm enough, for she gathered up her loops of cane and
brought the chair she was mending a little way into the hall-kitchen
itself. She sat down on the square box they used to cover the sewing
machine.

"Thank you, lady dear," she murmured, lifting her handsome almond eyes to
Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel did not see the long, furtive, curious glance.
Her own eyes were closed, as if she was tired; her cheeks were smiling;
one of them had dropped a little to one shoulder, as it might have
dropped had she held in her arms a babe; and she was rocking, softly,
slowly, the rocker of the chair making a little regular noise on the
polished floor.

The gipsy woman beckoned to one of the children.

"Tell the lady, when she wakes, that I will tack a strip of felt to the
rocker, and then it will make no noise at all," said the low and
wheedling voice; and the child retired again.

The interment of Flora proceeded....

An hour later Flora had taken up the burden of Life again. It was as
Angela, the youngest, was chastising her for some offence, that Sabrina,
the eldest, looked with wondering eyes on the babe in the gipsy's sling.
She approached on tiptoe.

"May I look at it, please?" she asked timidly.

The gipsy set one shoulder forward, and Sabrina put the shawl gently
aside, peering at the dusky brown morsel within.

"Sometime, perhaps--if I'm very careful--"

Sabrina ventured diffidently, "--if I'm _very_ careful--may I hold it?"

Before replying, the gipsy once more turned her almond eyes towards Aunt
Rachel's chair. Aunt Rachel had been awakened for the conclusion of
Flora's funeral, but her eyes were closed again now, and once more her
cheek was dropped in that tender suggestive little gesture, and she
rocked. But you could see that she was not properly asleep.... It was,
somehow, less to Sabrina, still peering at the babe in the sling, than to
Aunt Rachel, apparently asleep, that the gipsy seemed to reply.

"You'll know some day, little missis, that a wean knows its own pair of
arms," her seductive voice came.

And Aunt Rachel heard. She opened her eyes with a start. The little
regular noise of the rocker ceased. She turned her head quickly;
tremulously she began to knit again; and, as her eyes rested on the
sidelong eyes of the gipsy woman, there was an expression in them that
almost resembled fright.


II

They began to deck the great hall-kitchen for Christmas, but the snow
still lay thick over hill and valley, and the gipsies' caravans remained
by the broken wall where the drifts had overtaken them. Though all the
chairs were mended, Annabel still came daily to the farm, sat on the box
they used to cover the sewing machine, and wove mats. As she wove them,
Aunt Rachel knitted, and from time to time fragments of talk passed
between the two women. It was always the white-haired lady who spoke
first, and Annabel made all sorts of salutes and obeisances with her eyes
before replying.

"I have not seen your husband," Aunt Rachel said to Annabel one day. (The
children at the other end of the apartment had converted a chest into an
altar, and were solemnising the nuptials of the resurrected Flora and
Jack, the raffish sailor-doll.)

Annabel made roving play with her eyes. "He is up at the caravans, lady
dear," she replied. "Is there anything Annabel can bid him do?"

"Nothing, thank you," said Aunt Rachel.

For a minute the gipsy watched Aunt Rachel, and then she got up from the
sewing machine box and crossed the floor. She leaned so close towards her
that she had to put up a hand to steady the babe at her back.

"Lady dear," she murmured with irresistible softness, "your husband died,
didn't he?"

On Aunt Rachel's finger was a ring, but it was not a wedding ring. It was
a hoop of pearls.

"I have never had a husband," she said.

The gipsy glanced at the ring. "Then that is--?"

"That is a betrothal ring," Aunt Rachel replied.

"Ah!..." said Annabel.

Then, after a minute, she drew still closer. Her eyes were fixed on Aunt
Rachel's, and the insinuating voice was very low.

"Ah!... And did _it_ die too, lady dear?"

Again came that quick, half-affrighted look into Aunt Rachel's face. Her
eyes avoided those of the gipsy, sought them, and avoided them again.

"Did what die?" she asked slowly and guardedly....

The child at the gipsy's back did not need suck; nevertheless, Annabel's
fingers worked at her bosom, and she moved the sling. As the child
settled, Annabel gave Aunt Rachel a long look.

"Why do you rock?" she asked slowly.

Aunt Rachel was trembling. She did not reply. In a voice soft as sliding
water the gipsy continued:

"Lady dear, we are a strange folk to you, and even among us there are
those who shuffle the pack of cards and read the palm when silver has
been put upon it, knowing nothing... But some of us _see_--some of us
_see_."

It was more than a minute before Aunt Rachel spoke.

"You are a woman, and you have your babe at your breast now.... Every
woman sees the thing you speak of."

But the gipsy shook her head. "You speak of seeing with the heart. I
speak of eyes--these eyes."

Again came a long pause. Aunt Rachel had given a little start, but had
become quiet again. When at last she spoke it was in a voice scarcely
audible.

"That cannot be. I know what you mean, but it cannot be.... He died
on the eve of his wedding. For my bridal clothes they made me black
garments instead. It is long ago, and now I wear neither black nor white,
but--" her hands made a gesture. Aunt Rachel always dressed as if to suit
a sorrow that Time had deprived of bitterness, in such a tender and
fleecy grey as one sees in the mists that lie like lawn over hedgerow
and copse early of a midsummer's morning. "Therefore," she resumed, "your
heart may see, but your eyes cannot see that which never was."

But there came a sudden note of masterfulness into the gipsy's voice.

"With my eyes--_these_ eyes," she repeated, pointing to them.

Aunt Rachel kept her own eyes obstinately on her knitting needles. "None
except I have seen it. It is not to be seen," she said.

The gipsy sat suddenly erect.

"It is not so. Keep still in your chair," she ordered, "and I will tell
you when--"

It was a curious thing that followed. As if all the will went out of
her, Aunt Rachel sat very still; and presently her hands fluttered and
dropped. The gipsy sat with her own hands folded over the mat on her
knees. Several minutes passed; then, slowly, once more that sweetest of
smiles stole over Aunt Rachel's cheeks. Once more her head dropped. Her
hands moved. Noiselessly on the rockers that the gipsy had padded with
felt the chair began to rock. Annabel lifted one hand.

"_Dovo se li_" she said. "It is there."

Aunt Rachel did not appear to hear her. With that ineffable smile still
on her face, she rocked....

Then, after some minutes, there crossed her face such a look as visits
the face of one who, waking from sleep, strains his faculties to
recapture some blissful and vanishing vision....

"_Jal_--it is gone," said the gipsy woman.

Aunt Rachel opened her eyes again. She repeated dully after Annabel:

"It is gone."

"Ghosts," the gipsy whispered presently, "are of the dead. Therefore it
must have lived."

But again Aunt Rachel shook her head. "It never lived."

"You were young, and beautiful?..."

Still the shake of the head. "He died on the eve of his wedding. They
took my white garments away and gave me black ones. How then could
it have lived?"

"Without the kiss, no.... But sometimes a woman will lie through her
life, and at the graveside still will lie.... Tell me the truth."

But they were the same words that Aunt Rachel repeated: "He died on the
eve of his wedding; they took away my wedding garments...." From her lips
a lie could hardly issue. The gipsy's face became grave....

She broke another long silence.

"I believe," she said at last. "It is a new kind--but no more wonderful
than the other. The other I have seen, now I have seen this also. Tell
me, does it come to any other chair?"

"It was his chair; he died in it," said Aunt Rachel.

"And you--shall you die in it?"

"As God wills."

"Has ... _other life_ ... visited it long?"

"Many years; but it is always small; it never grows."

"To their mothers babes never grow. They remain ever babes.... None other
has ever seen it?"

"Except yourself, none. I sit here; presently it creeps into my arms; it
is small and warm; I rock, and then... it goes."

"Would it come to another chair?"

"I cannot tell. I think not. It was his chair."

Annabel mused. At the other end of the room Flora was now bestowed on
Jack, the disreputable sailor. The gipsy's eyes rested on the bridal
party....

"Yet another might see it--"

"None has."

"No; but yet.... The door does not always shut behind us suddenly.
Perhaps one who has toddled but a step or two over the threshold might,
by looking back, catch a glimpse.... What is the name of the smallest
one?"

"Angela."

"That means 'angel'... Look, the doll who died yesterday is now being
married.... It may be that Life has not yet sealed the little one's eyes.
Will you let Annabel ask her if she sees what it is you hold in your
arms?"

Again the voice was soft and wheedling....

"No, Annabel," said Aunt Rachel faintly.

"Will you rock again?"

Aunt Rachel made no reply.

"Rock..." urged the cajoling voice.

But Aunt Rachel only turned the betrothal ring on her finger. Over at the
altar Jack was leering at his new-made bride, past decency; and little
Angela held the wooden horse's head, which had parted from its body.

"Rock, and comfort yourself--" tempted the voice.

Then slowly Aunt Rachel rose from her chair.

"No, Annabel," she said gently. "You should not have spoken. When the
snow melts you will go, and come no more; why then did you speak? It was
mine. It was not meant to be seen by another. I no longer want it. Please
go."

The swarthy woman turned her almond eyes on her once more.

"You cannot live without it," she said as she also rose....

And as Jack and his bride left the church on the reheaded horse, Aunt
Rachel walked with hanging head from the apartment.


III

Thenceforward, as day followed day, Aunt Rachel rocked no more; and with
the packing and partial melting of the snow the gipsies up at the
caravans judged it time to be off about their business. It was on the
morning of Christmas Eve that they came down in a body to the Abbey
Farm to express their thanks to those who had befriended them; but the
bailiff was not there. He and the farm men had ceased work, and were
down at the church, practising the carols. Only Aunt Rachel sat, still
and knitting, in the black walnut chair; and the children played on the
floor.

A night in the toy-box had apparently bred discontent between Jack
and Flora--or perhaps they sought to keep their countenances before
the world; at any rate, they sat on opposite sides of the room, Jack
keeping boon company with the lead soldiers, his spouse reposing, her
lead-balanced eyes closed, in the broken clockwork motor-car. With the
air of performing some vaguely momentous ritual, the children were
kissing one another beneath the bunch of mistletoe that hung from the
centre beam. In the intervals of kissing they told one another in
whispers that Aunt Rachel was not very well, and Angela woke Flora to
tell her that Aunt Rachel had Brown Titus also.

"Stay you here; I will give the lady dear our thanks," said Annabel to
the group of gipsies gathered about the porch; and she entered the
great hall-kitchen. She approached the chair in which Aunt Rachel sat.

There was obeisance in the bend of her body, but command in her long
almond eyes, as she spoke.

"Lady dear, you must rock or you cannot live."

Aunt Rachel did not look up from her work.

"Rocking, I should not live long," she replied.

"We are leaving you."

"All leave me."

"Annabel fears she has taken away your comfort."

"Only for a little while. The door closes behind us, but it opens again."

"But for that little time, rock--"

Aunt Rachel shook her head.

"No. It is finished. Another has seen.... Say good-bye to your
companions; they are very welcome to what they have had; and God speed
you."

"They thank you, lady dear.... Will you not forget that Annabel saw, and
rock?"

"No more."

Annabel stooped and kissed the hand that bore the betrothal hoop of
pearls. The other hand Aunt Rachel placed for a moment upon the smoky
head of the babe in the sling. It trembled as it rested there, but the
tremor passed, and Annabel, turning once at the porch, gave her a last
look. Then she departed with her companions.

That afternoon, Jack and Flora had shaken down to wedlock as married
folk should, and sat together before the board spread with the dolls'
tea-things. The pallid light in the great hall-kitchen faded; the candles
were lighted; and then the children, first borrowing the stockings of
their elders to hang at the bed's foot, were packed off early--for it was
the custom to bring them down again at midnight for the carols. Aunt
Rachel had their good-night kisses, not as she had them every night, but
with the special ceremony of the mistletoe.

Other folk, grown folk, sat with Aunt Rachel that evening; but the old
walnut chair did not move upon its rockers. There was merry talk, but
Aunt Rachel took no part in it. The board was spread with ale and cheese
and spiced loaf for the carol-singers; and the time drew near for their
coming.

When at midnight, faintly on the air from the church below, there came
the chiming of Christmas morning, all bestirred themselves.

"They'll be here in a few minutes," they said; "somebody go and bring the
children down;" and within a very little while subdued noises were heard
outside, and the lifting of the latch of the yard gate. The children were
in their nightgowns, hardly fully awake; a low voice outside was heard
giving orders; and then there arose on the night the carol.

"Hush!" they said to the wondering children; "listen!..."

It was the Cherry Tree Carol that rose outside, of how sweet Mary, the
Queen of Galilee, besought Joseph to pluck the cherries for her Babe, and
Joseph refused; and the voices of the singers, that had begun
hesitatingly, grew strong and loud and free.

"... and Joseph wouldn't pluck the cherries," somebody was whispering to
the tiny Angela....

"_Mary said to Cherry Tree,
  'Bow down to my knee,
That I may pluck cherries
  For my Babe and me._'"

the carollers sang; and "Now listen, darling," the one who held Angela
murmured....

"_The uppermost spray then
  Bowed down to her knee;
'Thus you may see, Joseph,
  These cherries are for me.'

"'O, eat your cherries, Mary,
  Give them your Babe now;
O, eat your cherries, Mary,
  That grew upon the bough._'"

The little Angela, within the arms that held her, murmured, "It's the
gipsies, isn't it, mother?"

"No, darling. The gipsies have gone. It's the carol-singers, singing
because Jesus was born."

"But, mother ... it _is_ the gipsies, isn't it?... 'Cos look..."

"Look where?"

"At Aunt Rachel, mother ... The gipsy woman wouldn't go without her
little baby, would she?"

"No, she wouldn't do that."

"Then has she _lent_ it to Aunt Rachel, like I lend my new toys
sometimes?"

The mother glanced across at Aunt Rachel, and then gathered the
night-gowned figure more closely.

"The darling's only half awake," she murmured.... "Poor Aunt Rachel's
sleepy too...."

Aunt Rachel, her head dropped, her hands lightly folded as if about some
shape that none saw but herself, her face again ineffable with that
sweet and peaceful smile, was once more rocking softly in her chair.


HIC JACET

A TALE OF ARTISTIC CONSCIENCE

INTRODUCTION


As I lighted my guests down the stairs of my Chelsea lodgings, turned up
the hall gas that they might see the steps at the front door, and shook
hands with them, I bade them good night the more heartily that I was glad
to see their backs. Lest this should seem but an inhospitable confession,
let me state, first, that they had invited themselves, dropping in in
ones and twos until seven or eight of them had assembled in my garret,
and, secondly, that I was rather extraordinarily curious to know why, at
close on midnight, the one I knew least well of all had seen fit to
remain after the others had taken their departure. To these two
considerations I must add a third, namely, that I had become tardily
conscious that, if Andriaovsky had not lingered of himself, I should
certainly have asked him to do so.

It was to nothing more than a glance, swift and momentary, directed by
Andriaovsky to myself while the others had talked, that I traced this
desire to see more of the little Polish painter; but a glance derives its
import from the circumstance under which it is given. That rapid turning
of his eyes in my direction an hour before had held a hundred questions,
implications, criticisms, incredulities, condemnations. It had been one
of those uncovenanted gestures that hold the promise of the treasures of
an eternal friendship. I wondered as I turned down the gas again and
remounted the stairs what personal message and reproach in it had lumped
me in with the others; and by the time I had reached my own door again a
phrase had fitted itself in my mind to that quick, ironical turning of
Andriaovsky's eyes: _"Et tu, Brute!..."_

He was standing where I had left him, his small shabby figure in the
attitude of a diminutive colossus on my hearthrug. About him were the
recently vacated chairs, solemnly and ridiculously suggestive of still
continuing the high and choice conversation that had lately finished. The
same fancy had evidently taken Andriaovsky, for he was turning from chair
to chair, his head a little on one side, mischievously and aggravatingly
smiling. As one of them, the deep wicker chair that Jamison had occupied,
suddenly gave a little creak of itself, as wicker will when released from
a strain, his smile broadened to a grin. I had been on the point of
sitting down in that chair, but I changed my mind and took another.

"That's right," said Andriaovsky, in that wonderful English which he had
picked up in less than three years, "don't sit in the wisdom-seat; you
might profane it."

I knew what he meant. I felt for my pipe and slowly filled it, not
replying. Then, slowly wagging his head from side to side, with his eyes
humorously and banteringly on mine, he uttered the very words I had
mentally associated with that glance of his.

_"Et tu, Brute!"_ he said, wagging away, so that with each wag the lenses
of his spectacles caught the light of the lamp on the table.

I too smiled as I felt for a match.

"It _was_ rather much, wasn't it?" I said.

But he suddenly stopped his wagging, and held up a not very clean
forefinger. His whole face was altogether too confoundedly intelligent.

"Oh no, you don't!" he said peremptorily. "No getting out of it like
that the moment they've turned their backs! No running--what is it?--no
running with the hare and hunting with the hounds! _You_ helped, you
know!"

I confess I fidgeted a little.

"But hang it all, what could I do? They were in my place," I broke out.

He chuckled, enjoying my discomfiture. Then his eyes fell on those absurd
and solemn chairs again.

"Look at 'em--the Art Shades in conference!" he chuckled. "That
rush-seated one, it was talking half an hour ago about 'Scherzos in
Silver and Grey!' ... Nice, fresh green stuff!"

To shut him up I told him that he would find cigarettes and tobacco on
the table.

"'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'!" he chuckled again as he took a
cigarette....

All this, perhaps, needs some explanation. It had been the usual thing,
usual in those days, twenty years ago--smarming about Art and the Arts
and so forth. They--"we," as apparently Andriaovsky had lingered behind
for the purpose of reminding me--had perhaps talked a little more
soaringly than the ordinary, that was all. There had been Jamison in the
wicker chair, full to the lips and running over with the Colour
Suggestions of the late Edward Calvert; Gibbs, in a pulpy state of
adoration of the less legitimate side of the painting of Watts; and
Magnani, who had advanced that an Essential Oneness underlies all the
Arts, and had triumphantly proved his thesis by analogy with the Law of
the Co-relation of Forces. A book called Music and Morals had appeared
about that time, and on it they--we--had risen to regions of kite-high
lunacy about Colour Symphonies, orgies of formless colour thrown on a
magic-lantern screen--vieux jeu enough at this time of day. A young
newspaper man, too, had made mental notes of our adjectives, for use in
his weekly (I nearly spelt it "weakly") half-column of Art Criticism;
and--and here was Andriaovsky, grinning at the chairs, and mimicking
it all with diabolical glee.

"'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'--'Word Pastels'--' Lyrics in Stone!'"
he chuckled. "And what was it the fat fellow said?' A Siren Song in
Marble!' Phew!... Well, I'll get along. I shall just be in time to get
a pint of bitter to wash it all down if I'm quick... Bah!" he broke out
suddenly. "Good men build up Form and Forms--keep the Arts each after
its kind--raise up the dikes so that we shan't all be swept away by night
and nothingness--and these rats come nosing and burrowing and undermining
it all!... _Et tu, Brute!_"

"Well, when you've finished rubbing it in--" I grunted.

"As if _you_ didn't know better!... Is that your way of getting back on
'em, now that you've chucked drawing and gone in for writing books?
Phew I... Well, I'll go and get my pint of beer--"

But he didn't go for his pint of beer. Instead, he began to prowl about
my room, pryingly, nosingly, touching things here and there. I watched
him as he passed from one thing to another. He was very little, and very,
very shabby. His trousers were frayed, and the sole of one of his boots
flapped distressingly. His old bowler hat--he had not thought it
necessary to wait until he got outside before thrusting it on the back of
his head--was so limp in substance that I verily believed that had he run
incautiously downstairs he would have found when he got to the bottom
that its crown had sunk in of its own weight. In spite of his remark
about the pint of beer, I doubt if he had the price of one in his pocket.

"What's this, Brutus--a concertina?" he suddenly asked, stopping before
the collapsible case in which I kept my rather old dress suit.

I told him what it was, and he hoisted up his shoulders.

"And these things?" he asked, moving to something else.

They were a pair of boot-trees of which I had permitted myself the
economy. I remember they cost me four shillings in the old Brompton
Road.

"And that's your bath, I suppose.... Dumb-bells too.... And--_oh, good
Lord!_..."

He had picked up, and dropped again as if it had been hot, somebody or
other's card with the date of a "day" written across the corner of it....

As I helped him on with his overcoat he made no secret of the condition
of its armholes and lining. I don't for one moment suppose that the
garment was his. I took a candle to light him down as soon as it should
please him to depart.

"Well, so long, and joy to you on the high road to success," he said with
another grin for which I could have bundled him down the stairs....

In later days I never looked to Andriaovsky for tact; but I stared at him
for his lack of it that night. And as I stared I noticed for the first
time the broad and low pylon of his forehead, his handsome mouth and
chin, and the fire and wit and scorn that smouldered behind his cheap
spectacles. I looked again; and his smallness, his malice, his pathetic
little braggings about his poverty, seemed all to disappear. He had
strolled back to my hearthrug, wishing, I have no doubt now, to be able
to exclaim suddenly that it was too late for the pint of beer for which
he hadn't the money, and to curse his luck; and the pigmy quality of his
colossusship had somehow gone.

As I watched him, a neighbouring clock struck the half-hour, and he
did even as I had surmised--cursed the closing time of the English
public-houses....

I lighted him down. For one moment, under the hall gas, he almost dropped
his jesting manner.

"You _do_ know better, Harrison, you know," he said. "But, of course,
you're going to be a famous author in almost no time. Oh, _ca se
voit_! No garrets for _you_! It was a treat,' the way you handled those
fellows--really ... Well don't forget us others when you're up there--I
may want you to write my 'Life' some day...."

I heard the slapping of the loose sole as he shuffled down the path. At
the gate he turned for a moment.

"Good night, Brutus," he called.

When I had mounted to my garret again my eyes fell once more on that
ridiculous assemblage of empty chairs, all solemnly talking to one
another. I burst out into a laugh. Then I undressed, put my jacket on the
hanger, took the morrow's boots from the trees and treed those I had
removed, changed the pair of trousers under my mattress, and went, still
laughing at the chairs, to bed.

This was Michael Andriaovsky, the Polish painter, who died four weeks
ago.


I

I knew the reason of Maschka's visit the moment she was announced. Even
in the stressful moments of the funeral she had found time to whisper to
me that she hoped to call upon me at an early date. I dismissed the
amanuensis to whom I was dictating the last story of the fourth series of
_Martin Renard_, gave a few hasty instructions to my secretary, and told
the servant to show Miss Andriaovsky into the drawing-room, to ask her
to be so good as to excuse me for five minutes, to order tea at once, and
then to bring my visitor up to the library.

A few minutes later she was shown into the room.

She was dressed in the same plainly cut costume of dead black she
had worn at the funeral, and had pushed up her heavy veil over the
close-fitting cap of black fur that accentuated her Sclavonic appearance.
I noticed again with distress the pallor of her face and the bistred
rings that weeks of nursing had put under her dark eyes. I noticed also
her resemblance, in feature and stature, to her brother. I placed a chair
for her; the tea-tray followed her in; and without more than a murmured
greeting she peeled off her gloves and prepared to preside at the tray.

She had filled the cups, and I had handed her toast, before she spoke.
Then:

"I suppose you know what I've come about," she said.

I nodded.

"Long, long ago you promised it. Nobody else can do it. The only question
is 'when.'"

"That's the only question," I agreed.

"We, naturally," she continued, after a glance in which her eyes mutely
thanked me for my implied promise, "are anxious that it should be as soon
as possible; but, of course--I shall quite understand--"

She gave a momentary glance round my library. I helped her out.

"You mean that I'm a very important person nowadays, and that you're
afraid to trespass on my time. Never mind that. I shall find time
for this. But tell me before we go any further exactly how you stand and
precisely what it is you expect."

Briefly she did so. It did not in the least surprise me to learn that her
brother had died penniless.

"And if you hadn't undertaken the 'Life,'" she said, "he might just as
well not have worked in poverty all these years. You can, at least, see
to his fame."

I nodded again gravely, and ruminated for a moment. Then I spoke.

"I can write it, fully and in detail, up to five years ago," I said. "You
know what happened then. I tried my best to help him, but he never would
let me. Tell me, Maschka, why he wouldn't sell me that portrait."

I knew instantly, from her quick confusion, that her brother had spoken
to her about the portrait he had refused to sell me, and had probably
told her the reason for his refusal. I watched her as she evaded the
question as well as she could.

"You know how--queer--he was about who he sold his things to. And as for
those five years in which you saw less of him, Schofield will tell you
all you want to know."

I relinquished the point. "Who's Schofield?" I asked instead.

"He was a very good friend of Michael's--of both of us. You can talk
quite freely to him. I want to say at the beginning that I should like
him to be associated with you in this."

I don't know how I divined on the spot her relation to Schofield, whoever
he was. She told me that he too was a painter.

"Michael thought very highly of his things," she said.

"I don't know them," I replied.

"You probably wouldn't," she returned....

But I caught the quick drop of her eyes from their brief excursion round
my library, and I felt something within me stiffen a little. It did not
need Maschka Andriaovsky to remind me that I had not attained my position
without--let us say--splitting certain differences; the looseness of
the expression can be corrected hereafter. Life consists very largely of
compromises. You doubtless know my name, whichever country or hemisphere
you happen to live in, as that of the creator of Martin Renard, the
famous and popular detective; and I was not at that moment disposed to
apologise, either to Maschka or Schofield or anybody else, for having
written the stories at the bidding of a gaping public. The moment the
public showed that it wanted something better I was prepared to give it.
In the meantime, I sat in my very comfortable library, securely shielded
from distress by my balance at my banker's.

"Well," I said after a moment, "let's see how we stand. And first
as to what you're likely to get out of this. It goes without saying,
of course, that by writing the 'Life' I can get you any amount of
'fame'--advertisement, newspaper talk, and all the things that, it struck
me, Michael always treated with especial scorn. My name alone, I say,
will do that. But for anything else I'm by no means so sure. You see," I
explained, "it doesn't follow that because I can sell hundreds of
thousands of... you know what... that I can sell anything I've a mind to
sign." I said it, confident that she had not lived all those years with
her brother without having learned the axiomatic nature of it. To my
discomfiture, she began to talk like a callow student.

"I should have thought that it followed that if you could sell
something--" she hesitated only for a moment, then courageously gave the
other stuff its proper adjective, "--something rotten, you could have
sold something good when you had the chance."

"Then if you thought that you were wrong," I replied briefly and
concisely.

"_Michael_ couldn't, of course," she said, putting Michael out of the
question with a little wave of her hand, "because Michael was--I mean,
Michael wasn't a business man. You are."

"I'm speaking as one," I replied. "I don't waste time in giving people
what they don't want. That is business. I don't undertake your brother's
'Life' as a matter of business, but as an inestimable privilege. I
repeat, it doesn't follow that the public will buy it."

"But--but--" she stammered, "the public will buy a _Pill_ if they see
your name on the testimonial!"

"A Pill--yes," I said sadly.... Genius and a Pill were, alas, different
things. "But," I added more cheerfully, "you can never tell what the
public will do. They _might_ buy it--there's no telling except by
trying--"

"Well, Schofield thinks they will," she informed me with decision.

"I dare say he does, if he's an artist. They mostly do," I replied.

"He doesn't think Michael will ever be popular," she emphasised the
adjective slightly, "but he does think he has a considerable following if
they could only be discovered."

I sighed. All artists think that. They will accept any compromise except
the one that is offered to them.... I tried to explain to Maschka that in
this world we have to stand to the chances of all or nothing.

"You've got to be one thing or the other--I don't know that it matters
very much which," I said. "There's Michael's way, and there's... mine.
That's all. However, we'll try it. All you can say to me, and more, I'll
say to a publisher for you. But he'll probably wink at me."

For a moment she was silent. Then she said: "Schofield rather fancies one
publisher."

"Oh? Who's he?" I asked.

She mentioned a name. If I knew anything at all of business she might as
well have offered _The Life of Michael Andriaovsky_ to The Religious
Tract Society at once....

"Hm!... And has Mr. Schofield any other suggestions?" I inquired.

He had. Several. I saw that Schofield's position would have to be defined
before we went any further.

"Hm!" I said again. "Well, I shall have to rely on Schofield for those
five years in which I saw little of Michael; but unless Schofield knows
more of publishing than I do, and can enforce a better contract and a
larger sum on account than I can, I really think, Maschka, that you'll do
better to leave things to me. For one thing, it's only fair to me. My
name hasn't much of an artistic value nowadays, but it has a very
considerable commercial one, and my worth to publishers isn't as a writer
of the Lives of Geniuses."

I could see she didn't like it; but that couldn't be helped. It had to be
so. Then, as we sat for a time in silence over the fire, I noticed again
how like her brother she was. She was not, it was true, much like him as
he had been on that last visit of mine to him ... and I sighed as I
remembered that visit. The dreadful scene had come back to me....

On account, I suppose, of the divergence of our paths, I had not even
heard of his illness until almost the finish. Immediately I had hastened
to the Hampstead "Home," only to find him already in the agony. He had
not been too far gone to recognise me, however, for he had muttered
something brokenly about "knowing better," that a spasm had interrupted.
Besides myself, only Maschka had been there; and I had been thankful for
the summons that had called her for a moment out of the room. I had still
retained his already cold hand; his brow had worked with that dreadful
struggle; and his eyes had been closed.

But suddenly he had opened them, and the next moment had sat up on his
pillow. He had striven to draw his hand from mine.

"Who are you?" he had suddenly demanded, not knowing me.

I had come close to him. "You know me, Andriaovsky--Harrison?" I had
asked sorrowfully.

I had been on the point of repeating my name but suddenly, after holding
my eyes for a moment with a look the profundity and familiarity of which
I cannot express, he had broken into the most ghastly haunting laugh I
have ever heard.

"_Harrison?_" the words had broken throatily from him.... "_Oh yes; I
know you!... You shall very soon know that I know you if... if..._"

The cough and rattle had come as Maschka had rushed into the room. In ten
seconds Andriaovsky had fallen back, dead.


II

That same evening I began to make notes for Andriaovsky's "Life." On the
following day, the last of the fourth series of the _Martin Renards_
occupied me until I was thankful to get to bed. But thereafter I could
call rather more of my time my own, and I began in good earnest to devote
myself to the "Life."

Maschka had spoken no more than the truth when she had said that of all
men living none but I could write that "Life." His remaining behind in my
Chelsea garret that evening after the others had left had been the
beginning of a friendship that, barring that lapse of five years at the
end, had been for twenty years one of completest intimacy. Whatever money
there might or might not be in the book, I had seen _my_ opportunity in
it--the opportunity to make it the vehicle for all the aspirations,
faiths, enthusiasms, and exaltations we had shared; and I myself did not
realise until I began to note them down one tithe of the subtle links and
associations that had welded our souls together.

Even the outward and visible signs of these had been wonderful. Setting
out from one or other of the score of garrets and cheap lodgings we had
in our time inhabited, we had wandered together, day after day, night
after night, far down East, where, as we had threaded our way among the
barrels of soused herrings and the stalls and barrows of unleavened
bread, he had taught me scraps of Hebrew and Polish and Yiddish; up into
the bright West, where he could never walk a quarter of a mile without
meeting one of his extraordinary acquaintances--furred music-hall
managers, hawkers of bootlaces, commercial magnates of his own Faith,
touts, crossing-sweepers, painted women; into Soho, where he had names
for the very horses on the cab-ranks and the dogs who slumbered under the
counters of the sellers of French literature; out to the naphtha-lights
and cries of the Saturday night street markets of Islington and the North
End Road; into City churches on wintry afternoons, into the studios of
famous artists full of handsomely dressed women, into the studios of
artists not famous, at the ends of dark and break-neck corridors; to tea
at the suburban homes of barmaids and chorus girls, to dinner in the
stables of a cavalry-barracks, to supper in cabmen's shelters. He was
possessed in some mysterious way of the passwords to doors in hoardings
behind which excavations were in progress; he knew by name the butchers
of the Deptford yards, the men in the blood-caked clothes, so inured to
blood that they may not with safety to their lives swear at one another;
he took me into an opium-cellar within a stone's-throw of Oxford Street,
and into a roof-chamber to call upon certain friends of his ... well,
they _said_ they were fire extinguishers, so I'd better not say they
were bombs. Up, down; here, there; good report, but more frequently
evil ... we had known this side of our London as well as two men may. And
our other adventures and peregrinations, not of the body, but of the
spirit ... but these must be spoken of in their proper place.

I had arranged with Maschka that Schofield should bring me the whole of
the work Andriaovsky had left behind him; and he arrived late one
afternoon in a fourwheeler, with four great packages done up in brown
paper. I found him to be a big, shaggy-browed, red-haired, raw-boned
Lancashire man of five-and-thirty, given to confidential demonstrations
at the length of a button-shank, quite unconscious of the gulf between
his words and his right to employ them, and bent on asserting an equality
that I did not dispute by a rather aggressive use of my surname.
Andriaovsky had appointed him his executor, and he had ever the air of
suspecting that the appointment was going to be challenged.

"A'm glad to be associated with ye in this melancholy duty, Harrison," he
said. "Now we won't waste words. Miss Andriaovsky has told me precisely
how matters stand. I had, as ye know, the honour to be poor Michael's
close friend for a period of five years, and my knowledge of him is
entirely at your disposal."

I answered that I should be seriously handicapped without it.

"Just so. It is Miss Andriaovsky's desire that we should pull together.
Now, in the firrst place, what is your idea about the forrm the book
should take?"

"In the first place, if you don't mind," I replied, "perhaps we'd better
run over together the things you've brought. The daylight will be gone
soon."

"Just as ye like, Harrison," he said, "just as ye like. It's all the same
to me...."

I cleared a space about my writing-table at the window, and we turned to
the artistic remains of Michael Andriaovsky.

I was astonished, first, at the enormous quantity of the stuff, and next
at its utter and complete revelation of the man. In a flash I realised
how superb that portion at least of the book was going to be. And
Schofield explained that the work he had brought represented but a
fraction of the whole that was at our disposal.

"Ye'll know with what foolish generosity poor Michael always gave his
things away," he said. "Hallard has a grand set; so has Connolly; and
from time to time he behaved varry handsomely to myself. Artists of varry
considerable talents both Hallard and Connolly are; Michael thought
varry highly of their abilities. They express the deepest interest in the
shape your worrk will take; and that reminds me. I myself have drafted a
rough scenario of the forrm it appeared to me the 'Life' might with
advantage be cast in. A purely private opinion, ye'll understand,
Harrison, which ye'll be entirely at liberty to disregard...."

"Well, let's finish with the work first," I said.

With boards, loose sheets, scraps of paper, notes, studies, canvases
stretched and stripped from their stretchers, we paved half the library
floor, Schofield keeping up all the time a running fire of "Grand,
grand! A masterpiece! A gem, that, Harrison!" They were all that he said,
and presently I ceased to hear his voice. The splendour of the work
issued undimmed even from the severe test of Schofield's praise; and I
thought again with pride how I, I, was the only man living who could
adequately write that "Life."....

"Aren't they grand? Aren't they great?" Schofield chanted monotonously.

"They are," I replied, coming to a consciousness of his presence again.
"But what's that?"

Secretively he had kept one package until the last. He now removed its
wrappings and set it against a chair.

_"There!"_ he cried. "I'll thank ye, Harrison, for your opinion of
_that!"_

It was the portrait Andriaovsky had refused to sell me--a portrait of
himself.

The portrait was the climax of the display. The Lancastrian still talked;
but I, profoundly moved, mechanically gathered up the drawings from the
floor and returned them to their proper packages and folios. I was dining
at home, alone, that evening, and for form's sake I asked this faithful
dog of Andriaovsky's to share my meal; but he excused himself--he was
dining with Hallard and Connolly. When the drawings were all put away,
all save that portrait, he gave an inquisitive glance round my library.
It was the same glance as Maschka had given when she had feared to
intrude on my time; but Schofield did these things with a much more heavy
hand. He departed, but not before telling me that even my mansion
contained such treasures as it had never held before.

That evening, after glancing at Schofield's "scenario," I carefully
folded it up again for return to him, lest when the book should appear
he should miss the pleasure of saying that I had had his guidance but
had disregarded it; then I sat down at my writing-table and took out
the loose notes I had made. I made other jottings, each on a blank sheet
for subsequent amplification; and the sheets overspread the large
leather-topped table and thrust one another up the standard of the
incandescent with the pearly silk shade. The firelight shone low and
richly in the dusky spaces of the large apartment; and the thick carpet
and the double doors made the place so quiet that I could hear my watch
ticking in my pocket.

I worked for an hour; and then, for the purpose of making yet other
notes, I rose, crossed the room, and took down the three or four
illustrated books to which, in the earlier part of his career,
Andriaovsky had put his name. I carried them to the table, and twinkled
as I opened the first of them. It was a book of poems, and in making the
designs for them Andriaovsky had certainly _not_ found for himself.
Almost any one of the "Art Shades," as he had called them, could have
done the thing equally well, and I twinkled again. I did not propose to
have much mercy on _that_. Already Schofield's words had given birth to a
suspicion in my mind--that Andriaovsky, in permitting these fellows,
Hallard, Connolly, and the rest, to suppose that he "thought highly" of
them and their work, had been giving play to that malicious humour of
his; and they naturally did not see the joke. That joke, too, was between
himself, dead, and me, preparing to write his "Life." As if he had been
there to hear me, I chuckled, and spoke in a low voice.

"You were pulling their legs, Michael, you know. A little rough on them
you were. But there's a book here of yours that I'm going to tell the
truth about. You and I won't pretend to one another. It's a rotten book,
and both you and I know it...."

I don't know what it was that caused me suddenly to see just then
something that I had been looking at long enough without seeing--that
portrait of himself that I had set leaning against the back of a chair at
the end of my writing-table. It stood there, just within the soft
penumbra of shadow cast by the silk-shaded light. The canvas had been
enlarged, the seam of it clumsily sewn by Andriaovsky's own hand; but in
that half-light the rough ridge of paint did not show, and I confess that
the position and effect of the thing startled me for a moment. Had I
cared to play a trick with my fancy I could have imagined the head
wagging from side to side, with such rage and fire was it painted. He had
had the temerity to dash a reflection across one of the glasses of his
spectacles, concealing the eye behind it. The next moment I had given a
short laugh.

"So you're there, are you?... Well, I know you agree very heartily about
that book of poems. Heigho! If I remember rightly, you made more money
out of that book than out of the others put together. But I'm going
to tell the truth about it. _I_ know better, you know...."

Chancing, before I turned in that night, to reopen one of his folios, I
came across a drawing, there by accident, I don't doubt, that confirmed
me in my suspicion that Andriaovsky had had his quiet joke with
Schofield, Hallard, Connolly and Co. It was a sketch of Schofield's,
imitative, deplorable, a dreadful show-up of incapacity. Well enough
"drawn," in a sense, it was ... and I remembered how Andriaovsky had ever
urged that "drawing," of itself, did not exist. I winked at the portrait.
I saw his point. He himself had no peer, and, rather than invite
comparison with stars of the second magnitude, he chose his intimates
from among the peddlers of the wares that had the least possible
connection with his Art. He, too, had understood that the Compromise
must be entirely accepted or totally refused; and while, in the
divergence of our paths, he had done the one thing and I the other, we
had each done it thoroughly, with vigour, and with persistence, and each
could esteem the other, if not as a co-worker, at least as an honourable
and out-and-out opposite.


III

Within a fortnight I was so deep in my task that, in the realest sense,
the greater part of my life was in the past. The significance of those
extraordinary peregrinations of ours had been in the opportunity they had
afforded for a communion of brain and spirit of unusual rarity; and all
this determined to my work with the accumulated force of its long
penning-up. I have spoken of Andriaovsky's contempt for such as had the
conception of their work that it was something they "did" as distinct
from something they "were"; and unless I succeed in making it plain that,
not as a mere figure of speech and loose hyperbole, but starkly and
literally, Andriaovsky _was_ everything he did, my tale will be
pointless.

There was not one of the basic facts of life--of Faith, Honour,
Truth-speaking, Falsehood, Betrayal, Sin--that he did not turn, not to
moral interpretations, as others do, but to the holy purposes of his
noble and passionate Art. For any man, Sin is only mortal when it is Sin
against that which he knows to be immortally true; and the things
Andriaovsky knew to be immortally true were the things that he had gone
down into the depths in order to bring forth and place upon his paper or
canvas. These things are not for the perusal of many. Unless you love the
things that he loved with a fervour comparable in kind, if not in degree,
with his own, you may not come near them. "Truth, 'the highest thing a
man may keep,'" he said, "cannot be brought down; a man only attains it
by proving his right to it"; and I think I need not further state his
views on the democratisation of Art. Of any result from the elaborate
processes of Art-education he held out no hope whatever. "It is in a man,
or it isn't," he ever declared; "if it is, he must bring it out for
himself; if it isn't, let him turn to something useful and have done with
it." I need not press the point that in these things he was almost a
solitary.

He made of these general despotic principles the fiercest personal
applications. I have heard his passionate outbreak of "Thief! Liar!
Fool!" over a drawing when it has seemed to him that a man has not
vouched with the safety of his immortal soul for the shapes and lines he
has committed to it. I have seen him get into such a rage with the eyes
of the artist upon him. I have heard the ice and vinegar of his words
when a good man, for money, has consented to modify and emasculate
his work; and there lingers in my memory his side of a telephone
conversation in which he told a publisher who had suggested that he
should do the same thing precisely what he thought of him. And on the
other hand, he once walked from Aldgate to Putney Hill, with a loose heel
on one of his boots, to see a man of whom he had seen but a single
drawing. See him he did, too, in spite of the man's footman, his liveried
parlourmaid, and the daunting effect of the electric brougham at the
door.

"He's a good man," he said to me afterwards, ruefully looking at the
place where his boot-heel had been. "You've got to take your good where
you find it. I don't care whether he's a rich amateur or skin-and-grief
in a garret as long as he's got the stuff in him. Nobody else could have
fetched me up from the East End this afternoon.... So long; see you in a
week or so--"

This was the only time I ever knew him break that sacred time in which he
celebrated each year the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles. I doubt
whether this observance of the ritual of his Faith was of more essential
importance to him than that other philosophical religion towards which he
sometimes leaned. I have said what his real religion was.

But to the "Life."

With these things, and others, as a beginning, I began to add page to
page, phase to phase; and, in a time the shortness of which astonished
myself, I had pretty well covered the whole of the first ten years of our
friendship. Maschka called rather less, and Schofield rather more
frequently, than I could have wished; and my surmise that he, at least,
was in love with her, quickly became a certainty. This was to be seen
when they called together.

It was when they came together that something else also became apparent.
This was their slightly derisive attitude towards the means by which I
had attained my success. It was not the less noticeable that it took the
form of compliments on the outward and visible results. Singly I could
manage them; together they were inclined to get a little out of hand.

I would have taxed them fairly and squarely with this, singly or
together, but for one thing--the beautiful ease with which the "Life" was
proceeding. Never had I felt so completely _en rapport_ with my subject.
So beautifully was the thing running that I had had the idle fancy of
some actual urge from Andriaovsky himself; and each night, before sitting
down to work, I set his portrait at my desk's end, as if it had been some
kind of an observance. The most beautiful result of all was, that I felt
what I had not felt for five years--that I too was not "doing" my work,
but actually living and being it. At times I took up the sheets I had
written as ignorant of their contents as if they had proceeded from
another pen--so freshly they came to me. And once, I vow, I found, in my
own handwriting, a Polish name, that I might (it is true) have
subconsciously heard at some time or other, but that stirred no chord in
my memory even when I saw it written. Maschka checked and confirmed it
afterwards; and I did not tell her by what odd circumstance it had issued
from my pen.

The day did come, however, when I found I must have it out with Schofield
about this superciliousness I have mentioned. The _Falchion_ had just
begun to print the third series of my _Martin Renard_; and this had been
made the occasion of another of Schofield's ponderous compliments. I
acknowledged it with none too much graciousness; and then he said:

"I've na doubt, Harrison, that by this time the famous sleuth-hound of
crime has become quite a creature of flesh and blood to ye."

It was the tone as much as the words that riled me; and I replied that
his doubts or the lack of them were a privacy with which I did not wish
to meddle. From being merely a bore the fellow was rapidly becoming
insolent.

"But I opine he'll get wearisome now and then, and in that case poor
Michael's 'Life' will come as a grand relaxation," he next observed.

If I meant to have it out, here was my opportunity.

"I should have thought you'd have traced a closer connection than that
between the two things," I remarked.

He shot a quick glance at me from beneath his shaggy russet brows.

"How so? I see varry little connection," he said suspiciously.

"There's this connection--that while you speak with some freedom of what
I do, you are quite willing to take advantage of it when it serves
your turn."

"'Advantage,' Harrison?" he said slowly.

"Of the advertisement _Martin Renard_ gives you. I must point out that
you condone a thing when you accept the benefit of it. Either you
shouldn't have come to me at all, or you should deny yourself the
gratification of these slurs."

"Slurrrrs?" he repeated loweringly.

"Both of you--you and Miss Andriaovsky, or Maschka as I call her, _tout
court_. Don't suppose I don't know as well as you do the exact worth of
my 'sleuth-hound,' as you call him. You didn't come to me solely because
I knew Andriaovsky well; you came because I've got the ear of the
public also; and I tell you plainly that, however much you dislike it,
Michael's fame as far as I'm of any use to him, depends on the
popularity of _Martin Renard."_

He shook his big head. "This is what I feared," he said.

"More," I continued, "you can depend upon it that Michael, wherever he
is, knows all about that."

"Ay, ay," he said sagely, "I misdoubt your own artistic soul's only to be
saved by the writing of poor Michael's 'Life,' Harrison."

"Leave that to me and Michael; we'll settle that. In the meantime, if you
don't like it, write and publish the 'Life' yourself."

He bent his brows on me.

"It's precisely what I wanted to do from the varry first," he said. "If
you'd cared to accept my symposium in the spirit in which it was offered,
I cannot see that the 'Life' would have suffered. But now, when you're
next in need of my services, ye'll mebbe send for me."

He took up his hat. I assured him, and let him take it in what sense he
liked, that I would do so; and he left me.

Not for one single moment did I intend that they should bounce me like
that. With or without their sanction and countenance, I intended to write
and publish that "Life." Schofield--in my own house too--had had the
advantage that a poor and ill-dressed man has over one who is not poor
and ill-dressed; but my duty first of all was neither to him nor to
Maschka, but to my friend.

The worst of it was, however, that I had begun dimly to suspect that
the Lancastrian had hit at least one nail on the head. "Your artistic
soul's only to be saved by writing poor Michael's 'Life,'" he had
informed me... and it was truer than I found it pleasant to believe.
Perhaps, after all, my first duty was not to Andriaovsky, but to myself.
I could have kicked myself that the fool had been perspicacious enough to
see it, but that did not alter the fact. I saw that in the sense in which
Andriaovsky understood Sin, I had sinned....

My only defence lay in the magnitude of my sin. I had sinned
thoroughly, out-and-out, and with a will. It had been the only
respectable way--Andriaovsky's own way when he had cut the company
of an Academician to hobnob with a vagabond. I had at least instituted
no comparison, lowered no ideal, was innocent of the accursed attitude
of facing-both-ways that degrades all lovely and moving things. I was, by
a paradox, too black a sinner not to hope for redemption....

I fell into a long musing on these things....

Had any of the admirers of _Martin Renard_ entered the library of his
author that night he would have seen an interesting thing. He would
have seen the creator of that idol of clerks and messenger-lads and
fourth-form boys frankly putting the case before a portrait propped up on
a chair. He would have heard that popular author haranguing, pleading,
curiously on his defence, turning the thing this way and that.

"If _you'd_ gone over, Michael," that author argued, "you'd have done
precisely the same thing. If I'd stuck it out, we were, after all, of a
kind; We've got to be one thing or the other--isn't that so, Andriaovsky?
Since I made up my mind, I've faced only one way--only one way. I've kept
your ideal and theirs entirely separate and distinct. Not one single
beautiful phrase will you find in the _Martin Renards;_ I've cut 'em
out, every one. I may have ceased to worship, but I've profaned no
temple.... And think what I _might_ have done--what they all do! They
deal out the slush, but with an apologetic glance at the Art Shades;
_you_ know the style!--'Oh, Harrison; he does that detective rubbish, but
that's not Harrison; if Harrison liked to drop that he could be a fine
artist!'--I _haven't_ done that. I _haven't_ run with the hare and hunted
with the hounds. I _am_ just Harrison, who does that detective
rubbish!... These other chaps, Schofield and Connolly, _they're_ the real
sinners, Michael--the fellows who can't make up their minds to be one
thing or the other ('artists of considerable abilities'--ha! ha!).... Of
course you know Maschka's going to marry that chap? What'll _they_ do, do
you think? He'll scrape up a few pounds out of the stew where I find
thousands, marry her, and they'll set up a salon and talk the stuff the
chairs talked that night, you remember!... But you wait until I finish
your 'Life.'..."

I laid it all before him, almost as if I sought to propitiate him. I
might have been courting his patronage for his own "Life." Then, with a
start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that
years before Andriaovsky had refused to sell me.


IV

The first check I experienced in the hitherto so easy flow of the "Life"
came at the chapter that dealt with Andriaovsky's attitude towards
"professionalism" in Art. He was inflexible on this point; there ought
not to be professional artists. When it was pointed out that his position
involved a premium upon the rich amateur, he merely replied that riches
had nothing to do with the question, and that the starver in the garret
was not excused for his poverty's sake from the observance of the
implacable conditions. He spoke literally of the "need" to create,
usually in the French term, _besogne_; and he was inclined to regard the
imposition of this need on a man rather as a curse laid upon him than as
a privilege and a pleasure. But I must not enlarge upon this further than
to observe that this portion of his "Life" which I was approaching
coincided in point of time with that period of my own life at which I had
been confronted with the alternative of starving for Art's sake or
becoming rich by supplying a clamorous trade demand.

It came, this check I have spoken of, one night, as I was in the very
middle of a sentence; and though I have cudgelled my brains in seeking
how best I can describe it, I am reduced to the simple statement that it
was as arresting, as sharp, actual and impossible to resist, as if my
hand had been seized and pinned down in its passage across the paper. I
can even see again the fragment of the sentence I had written: "... _and
the mere contemplation of a betrayal so essential--_" Then came that
abrupt and remarkable stop. It was such an experience as I had formerly
known only in nightmare.

I sat there looking blankly and stupidly at my own hand. And not only was
my hand arrested, but my brain also had completely ceased to work. For
the life of me I could not recall the conclusion of the sentence I had
planned a moment before.

I looked at my hand, and looked again; and as I looked I remembered
something I had been reading only a few days before--a profoundly
unsettling description of an experiment in auto-suggestion. The
experiment had consisted of the placing of a hand upon a table, and the
laying upon it the conjuration that, the Will notwithstanding, it should
not move. And as I watched my own hand, pale on the paper in the pearly
light, I knew that, by some consent to the nullification of the Will that
did not proceed from, the Self I was accustomed to regard as my own, that
injunction was already placed upon it. My conscious and deliberate Will
was powerless. I could only sit there and wait until whatever inhibition
had arrested my writing hand should permit it to move forward again.

It must have been several minutes before such a tingling of the nerves as
announces that the blood is once more returning to a cramped member
warned me that I was about to be released. Warily I awaited my moment;
then I plucked my hand to myself again with a suddenness that caused a
little blot of ink to spurt from my fountain-pen on to the surface of the
paper. I drew a deep breath. I was free again. And with the freedom came
a resolve--that whatever portion of myself had been responsible for this
prank should not repeat it if I could possibly prevent it.

But scarcely had I come, as I may say (and not without a little gush of
alarm now that it was over), to myself, when I was struck by a thought.
It was a queer wild sort of thought. It fetched me out of my chair and
set me striding across the library to a lower shelf in the farthest
corner. This shelf was the shelf on which I kept my letter-files. I
stooped and ran my fingers along the backs of the dusty row. I drew out
the file for 1900, and brought it back to my writing-table. My contracts,
I ought to say, reposed in a deed-box at my agent's office; but my files
contained, in the form of my agent's letters, a sufficient record of my
business transactions.

I opened the file concertina-wise, and turned to the section lettered
"R." I drew out the correspondence that related to the sale of the first
series of the _Martin Renards_. As I did so I glanced at the movable
calendar on my table. The date was January 20th.

The file contained no letters for January of any significance whatever.

The thought that had half formed in my brain immediately became nonsense.
I replaced the letters in their compartment, and took the file back to
its shelf again. For some minutes I paced the library irresolutely; then
I decided I would work no more that night. When I gathered together my
papers I was careful to place that with the half-finished sentence on the
top, so that with the first resting of my eyes upon it on the morrow my
memory might haply be refreshed.

I tried again to finish that sentence on the morrow. With certain
modifications that I need not particularise here, my experience was the
same as on the previous night.

It was the same when I made the attempt on the day after that.

At ten o'clock of the night of the fourth day I completed the sentence
without difficulty. I just sat down in my chair and wrote it.

With equal ease I finished the chapter on professional artists.

It was not likely that Schofield would have refrained from telling
Maschka of our little difference on our last meeting; and within a week
of the date I have just mentioned I learned that she knew all about it.
And, as the circumstances of my learning this were in a high degree
unusual, I will relate them with such clearness as I am able.

I ought first to say, however, that the selection of the drawings that
were to illustrate the book having been made (the drawings for which my
own text was to serve as commentary would be the better expression), the
superintendence of their production had been left to Schofield. He,
Maschka, and I passed the proofs in consultation. The blocks were almost
ready; and the reason for their call that evening was to consider the
possibility of having all ready for production in the early spring--a
possibility which was contingent on the state of advancement of my own
share of the book.

That evening I had experienced my second check. (I omit those that had
immediately succeeded the first one, as resembling that one so closely in
the manner of their coming.) It had not come by any means so completely
and definitively as the former one, but it had sufficed to make my
progress, both mentally and mechanically, so sluggish and struggling
a performance that for the time being I had given up the attempt, and was
once more regarding with a sort of perturbed stupor my hand that held the
pen. Andriaovsky's portrait stood in its usual place, on the chair at the
end of my writing-table; but I had eyes for nothing but that refractory
hand of mine.

Now it is true that during the past weeks I had studied Andriaovsky's
portrait thoroughly enough to be able to call up the vivid mental image
of it at will; but that did not entirely account for the changed aspect
with which it now presented itself to that uncomprehended sense within
us that makes of these shadows such startling realities. Flashing and
life-like as was the presentation on the canvas (mind you, I was not
looking at it, but all the time at my own hand), it was dead paint by
comparison with that _mental image_ which I saw (if I may so use a term
of which custom has restricted the meaning to one kind of seeing) as
plainly as I ever saw Andriaovsky in his life. I know now that it was
by virtue of that essential essence that bound us heart and brain and
soul together that I so saw him, eyes glittering, head sardonically
wagging, fine mouth shaping phrases of insight and irony. And the strange
thing was, that I could not have located this so living image by
confining it to any portion of the space within the four walls of my
library. It was before me, behind me, within my head, about me, _was me_,
invading and possessing the "me" that sat at the table. At one moment
the eyes mockingly invited me to go on with my work; the next, a frown
had seated itself on that massive pylon of his forehead; and then
suddenly his countenance changed entirely.... A wave of horror broke
over me. He was suddenly as I had seen him that last time in the
Hampstead "Home"--sitting up on his pillow, looking into my eyes with
that terrible look of profundity and familiarity, and asking me who I
was.... _"Harrison--ha ha!... You shall very soon know that I know you,
if ..."_

It is but by the accidence of our limited experience that sounds are loud
or soft to that inner ear of us; these words were at one and the same
time a dreadful thunder and a voice interstellarly inaccessible and
withdrawn. They, too, were before, behind, without, and within. And
incorporated (I know not how else to express it) with these words were
other words, in the English I knew, in the Hebrew in which he had quoted
them from the sacred Books of his People, in all languages, in no
language save that essential communication of which languages are but the
inessential husk and medium--words that told me that though I took the
Wings of the Morning and fled into the uttermost parts of the earth, yea,
though I made my bed in Hell, I could not escape him....

He had kept his word. I _did_ know that he knew who and what I was....

I cannot tell whether my lips actually shaped the question that even in
that moment burst from me.

"But Form--and Forms? It _is_ then true that all things are but aspects
of One thing?..."

"Yes--in death," the voice seemed to reply.

My next words, I know, were actually spoken aloud.

"Then tell me--tell me--_do you not wish me to write it?"_

Suddenly I leapt out of my chair with a gulping cry. A voice _had_
spoken....

"Of course we wish you to write it...."

For one instant of time my vision seemed to fold on itself like smoke;
then it was gone. The face into which I was wildly staring was Maschka's,
and behind her stood Schofield. They had been announced, but I had heard
nothing of it.

"Were you thinking of _not_ writing it?" she demanded, while Schofield
scowled at me.

"No--no--," I stammered, as I got up and tardily placed them chairs.

Schofield did not speak, but he did not remove his eyes from me. Somehow
I could not meet them.

"Well," she said, "Jack had already told me that you seemed in two minds
about it. That's what we've called about--to know definitely what it is
you propose to do."

I saw that she had also called, if necessary, to quarrel. I began to
recover a little.

"Did you tell her that?" I demanded of Schofield. "If you did,
you--misinterpreted me."

In my house, he ignored the fact that I was in the room. He replied to
Maschka.

"I understood Mr. Harrison to say definitely, and in those words, that if
I didn't like the way in which he was writing Michael's 'Life,' I might
write and publish one myself," he said.

"I did say that," I admitted; "but I never said that whatever _you_ did I
should not go on with mine."

"Yours!" cried Maschka. "What right have _you_ in my brother's 'Life'?"

I quickly told her.

"I have the right to write my recollections of him, and, subject to
certain provisions of the Law, to base anything on them I think fit," I
replied.

"But," she cried aghast, "there can't be _two_ 'Lives'!..."

"It's news to me that two were contemplated," I returned. "The point is,
that I can get mine published, and you can't."

Schofield's harsh voice sounded suddenly--but again to Maschka, not to
me.

"Ye might remind Mr. Harrison that others have capabilities in business
besides himself. Beyond a doubt our sales will be comparatively small,
but they'll be to such as have not made the great refusal."

Think of it!... I almost laughed.

"Oh!... Been trying it?" I inquired.

He made no reply.

"Well, those who have made the refusal have at least had something to
refuse," I said mildly. Then, realising that this was mere quarrelling, I
returned to the point. "Anyhow, there's no question of refusing to write
the 'Life.' I admit that during the last fortnight I've met with certain
difficulties; but the task isn't so easy as perhaps it looks.... I'm
making progress."

"I suppose," she said hesitatingly, after a pause, "that you don't care
to show it as far as it is written?"

For a moment I also hesitated. I thought I saw where she was. Thanks to
that Lancashire jackanapes, there was division between us; and I had
pretty well made up my mind, not only that he thought himself quite
capable of writing Andriaovsky's "Life," himself, but that he had
actually made an attempt in that direction. They had come in the
suspicion that I was throwing them over, and, though that suspicion was
removed, Maschka wished, if there was any throwing over to be done, to do
it herself. In a word, she wanted to compare me with Schofield.

"To see it as far as it is written," I repeated slowly.... "Well, you
may. That is, you, Michael's sister, may. But on the condition that
you neither show it to anybody else nor speak of it to anybody else."

"Ah!" she said.... "And only on those conditions?"

"Only on those conditions."

I saw a quick glance between them. "Shall we tell him?" it seemed to
say....

"Including the man Michael's sister is going to marry?" she said
abruptly.

My attitude was deeply apologetic, but, "Including anybody whomsoever," I
answered.

"Then," she said, rising, "we won't bother. But will you at least let us
know, soon, when we may expect your text?"

"I will let you know," I replied slowly, "one week from to-day."

On that assurance they left; and when they had gone I crossed once more
to the lower shelf that contained my letter-files. I turned up the file
for 1900 once more. During their visit I had had an idea.

I ran through the letters, and then replaced them....

Yes, I ought to be able to let them know within the week.


V

Against the day when I myself shall come to die, there are in the
pigeon-holes of the newspaper libraries certain biographical records
that deal roughly with the outward facts of my life; and these,
supplemented by documents I shall place in the hands of my executors,
will tell the story of how I leaped at a bound into wealth and fame with
the publication of _The Cases of Martin Renard_. I will set down as much
of that story as has its bearing on my present tale.

_Martin Renard_ was not immediately accepted by the first editor to whom
it was offered. It does not suffice that in order to be popular a thing
shall be merely good--or bad; it must be bad--or good--in a particular
way. For taking the responsibility when they happen to miss that
particular way editors are paid their salaries. When they happen to hit
it they grow fat on circulation-money: Since it becomes me ill to quarrel
with the way in which any man earns his money, I content myself with
merely stating the fact.

By the time the fourth editor had refused my series I was about at my
last gasp. To write the things at all I had had to sink four months in
time; and debts, writs and pawnshops were my familiars. I was little
better off than Andriaovsky at his very worst. I had read the first of
the _Martin Renards_ to him, by the way; the gigantic outburst of mirth
with which he had received it had not encouraged me to read him a second.
I wrote the others in secret.

I wrote the things in the spring and summer of 1900; and by the last day
of September I was confident that I had at last sold them. Except by a
flagrant breach of faith, the editor in whose desk they reposed could
hardly decline them. As it subsequently happened, I have now nothing but
gratitude for him that he did, after all, decline them; for I had a
duplicate copy "on offer" in another quarter.

He declined them, I say; and I was free to possess my soul again among my
writs, debts and pawnshops.

But four days later I received the alternative offer. It was from the
_Falchion_. The _Falchion_, as you may remember, has since run no less
than five complete series of _Martin Renards_. It bought "both sides,"
that is to say, both British and American serial rights. Of the twelve
_Martin Renards_ I had written, my wise agent had offered the _Falchion_
six only. On his advice I accepted the offer.

Instantaneously with the publication of those six stories came my
success. In two continents I was "home"--home in the hearts of the
public. I had my small cheque--it was not much more than a hundred
pounds--but "Wait," said my agent; "let's see what we can do with the
other six...."

Precisely what he did with them only he and I know; but I don't mind
saying that £3000 did not buy my first serial rights. Then came second
and third rights, and after them the book rights, British, American, and
Colonial. Then came the translation rights. In French, my creation is, of
course, as in English, _Martin Renard_; in German he is Martin Fuchs; and
by a similar process you can put him--my translators have put him--into
Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, and three-fourths of the tongues of
Europe. And this was the first series only. It was only with the second
series that the full splendour of my success appeared. My very imitators
grew rich; my agent's income from his comparatively small percentage on
my royalties was handsome; and he chuckled and bade me wait for the
dramatic rights and the day when the touring companies should get to
business....

I had "got there."

And I remember, sadly enough now, my first resolution when the day came
when I was able to survey the situation with anything approaching calm.
It was, "Enough." For the rest of my days I need not know poverty again.
Thenceforward I need not, unless I chose, do any but worthy work. _Martin
Renard_ had served his purpose handsomely, and I intended to have nothing
more to do with him.

Then came that dazzling offer for the second series....

I accepted it.

I accepted the third likewise; and I have told you about the fourth....

I have tried to kill _Martin Renard_. He was killing me. I have, in
the pages of the _Falchion_, actually killed him; but I have had to
resuscitate him. I cannot escape from him....

I am not setting down one word more of this than bears directly on my
tale of Andriaovsky's "Life." For those days, when my whole future had
hung in the balance, _were the very days covered by that portion of
Andriaovsky's life at which I had now arrived_. I had reached, and was
hesitating at, our point of divergence. Those checks and releases which I
had at first found so unaccountable corresponded with the vicissitudes of
the _Martin Renard_ negotiations.

The actual dates did not, of course, coincide--I had quickly discovered
the falsity of that scent. Neither did the intervals between them, with
the exception of those few days in which I had been unable to complete
that half-written sentence--the few days immediately prior to my
(parallel) acceptance by the _Falchion_. But, by that other reckoning
of time, of mental and spiritual experience, _they tallied exactly_.
The gambling chances of five years ago meant present stumblings and
haltings; the breach of faith of an editor long since meant a present
respite; and another week should bring me to that point of my so
strangely reduplicated experience that, allowing for the furious mental
rate at which I was now living, would make another node with that other
point in the more slowly lived past that had marked my acceptance of the
offer for the second half-dozen of the _Martin Renards_.

It had been on this hazardous calculation that I had made my promise to
Maschka.

I passed that week in a state of constantly increasing apprehension.
True, I worked at the "Life," even assiduously; but it was plain sailing,
mere cataloguing of certain of Andriaovsky's works, a chapter I had
deliberately planned _pour mieux sauter_--to enhance the value of the
penultimate and final chapters. These were the real crux of the "Life."
These were what I was reserving myself for. These were to show that only
his body was dead, and that his spirit still lived and his work was
still being done wherever a man could be found whose soul burned within
him with the same divine ardour.

But I was now realising, day by day, hour by hour more clearly, what I
was incurring. I was penning nothing less than my own artistic damnation.
Self-condemned, indeed, I had been this long time; but I was now making
the world a party to the sentence. The crowning of Andriaovsky involved
my own annihilation; his "Life" would be my "Hic Jacet." And yet I was
prepared, nay, resolved, to write it. I had started, and I would go
forward. I would not be spewed with the lukewarm out of the mouth of that
Spirit from which proceeds all that is bright and pure and true. The
vehemence with which I had rejected its divine bidding should at least be
correspondent with my adoration of it. The snivelling claims of the
Schofields I spurned. If, as they urged, "an artist must live," he must
live royally or starve with a tight mouth. No complaining....

And one other claim I urged in the teeth of this Spirit, which, if it
was a human Spirit at all, it could not disregard. Those pigeon-holed
obituaries of mine will proclaim to the world, one and all, the virtues
of my public life. In spite of my royal earnings, I am not a rich man. I
have not accepted wealth without accepting the personal responsibility
for it. Sick men and women in more than one hospital lie in wards
provided by _Martin Renard_ and myself; and I am not dishonoured in my
Institution at Poplar. Those vagrant wanderings with Andriaovsky have
enabled me to know the poor and those who help the poor. My personal
labours in the administration of the Institute are great, for outside
the necessary routine I leave little to subordinates. I have declined
honours offered to me for my "services to Literature," and I have never
encouraged a youth, of parts or lacking them, to make of Literature a
profession. And so on and so forth. All this, and more, you will read
when the day comes; and I don't doubt the _Falchion_ will publish my
memoir in mourning borders...

But to resume.

I finished the chapter I have mentioned. Maschka and her fiancé kept
punctiliously away. Then, before sitting down to the penultimate
chapter, I permitted myself the relaxation of a day in the country.

I can't tell you precisely where I went; I only know it was somewhere in
Buckinghamshire, and that, ordering the car to await me a dozen miles
farther on, I set out to walk. Nor can I tell you what I saw during that
walk; I don't think I saw anything. There was a red wintry disc of a sun,
I remember, and a land grey with rime; and that is all. I was entirely
occupied with the attempt I was about to make. I think that even then
I had the sense of doom, for I know not how otherwise I should have
found myself several times making little husbandings of my force, as if
conscious that I should need it all. For I was determined, as never in my
life have I been determined, to write that "Life." And I intended, not to
wait to be challenged, but to challenge.... I met the car, returning in
search of me; and I dined at a restaurant, went home to bed, and slept
dreamlessly.

On the morrow I deliberately refrained from work until the evening. My
challenge to Andriaovsky and the Powers he represented should be boldly
delivered at the very gates of their own Hour. Not until half-past eight,
with the curtains drawn, the doors locked, and orders given that on no
account whatever was I to be disturbed, did I switch on the pearly light,
place Andriaovsky's portrait in its now accustomed place, and draw my
chair up to my writing-table.


VI

But before I could resume the "Life" at the point at which I had left it,
I felt that there were certain preliminaries to be settled. It was not
that I wished to sound a parley with any view of coming to terms; I had
determined what the terms were to be. As a boxer who leaps from his
corner the moment the signal is given, astounding with suddenness his
less prompt antagonist, so I should be ready when the moment came. But I
wished the issue to be defined. I did not propose to submit the whole of
my manhood to the trial. I was merely asserting my right to speak of
certain things which, if one chose to exaggerate their importance by a
too narrow and exclusive consideration of them, I might conceivably be
thought to have betrayed.

I drew a sheet of paper towards me, and formally made out my claim. It
occupied not more than a dozen lines, and its nature has already been
sufficiently indicated. I put my pen down again, leaned back in my chair,
and waited.

I waited, but nothing happened. It seemed that if this was my attempt to
justify myself, the plea was certainly not disallowed. But neither had I
any sign that it was allowed; and presently it occurred to me that
possibly I had couched it in terms too general. Perhaps a more particular
claim would meet with a different reception.

During the earlier stages of the book's progress I had many times
deliberated on the desirability of a Preface that should state succinctly
what I considered to be my qualifications for the task. Though I had
finally decided against any such statement, the form of the Preface might
nevertheless serve for the present occasion. I took another sheet of
paper, headed it "Preface," and began once more to write.

I covered the page; I covered a second; and half-way down the third I
judged my statement to be sufficient. Again I laid down my pen, leaned
back, and waited.

The Preface also produced no result whatever.

Again I considered; and then I saw more clearly. It came to me that, both
in the first statement and in the Preface, I was merely talking to
myself. I was convincing myself, and losing both time and strength in
doing so. The Power with which I sought to come to grips was treating my
vapourings with high disregard. To be snubbed thus by Headquarters
would never, never do....

Then I saw more clearly still. It seemed that my _right to challenge_
was denied. I was not an adversary, with the rights and honours of an
adversary, but a trangressor, whose trangression had already several
times been sharply visited, and would be visited once more the moment it
was repeated. I might, in a sense, please myself whether I brought myself
into Court; but, once there, I was not the arraigner in the box, but the
arraigned in the dock.

And I rebelled hotly. Did I sit there, ready for the struggle, only to be
told that there could be no struggle? Did that vengeful Angel of the Arts
ignore my very existence?... By Yea and Nay I swore that he should take
notice of me! Once before, a mortal had wrestled a whole night with an
angel, and though he had been worsted, it had not been before he had
compelled the Angel to reveal himself! And so would I...

Challenge, title to challenge, tentatives, preliminaries, I suddenly cast
them all aside. We would have it in deeds, not in further words. I opened
a drawer, took out the whole of the "Life" so far written, and began to
read. I wanted to grasp once more the plan of it in its entirety.

Page after page, I read on, with deepening attention. Quickly I ran
through half of it. Then I began to concentrate myself still more
closely. There would come a point at which I should be flush with the
stream of it again, again feel the force of its current; I felt myself
drawing nearer to that point; when I should reach it I would go ahead
without a pause...

I read to the end of Chapter Fifteen, the last completed chapter. Then
instantly I took my pen and wrote, "Chapter Sixteen...."

I felt the change at the very first word.

       *        *        *        *        *

I will not retraverse any ground I have covered before. If I have not
already made clear my former sensations of the petrefaction of hand and
brain, I despair of being able to do so any better now. Suffice it that
once more I felt that inhibition, and that once more I was aware of the
ubiquitous presence of the image of the dead artist. Once more I heard
those voices, near as thunder and yet interstellarly remote, crying that
solemn warning, that though I took the Wings of the Morning, made my bed
in Hell, or cried aloud upon the darkness to cover me, there was one
Spirit from which I could not hope to escape. I felt the slight crawling
of my flesh on my bones as I listened.

But there was now a difference. On the former occasion, to hear again
those last horrible words of his, "_You shall very soon know I know who
you are if_..." had been the signal for the total unnerving of me and for
that uncontrollable cry, "_Don't you then want me to write it_?" But now
I intended to write it if I could. In order that I might tell him so I
was now seeking him out, in what heights or depths I knew not, at what
peril to myself I cared not. I cared not, since I now felt that I could
not continue to live unless I pressed to the uttermost attempt. And I
must repeat, and repeat again, and yet repeat, that in that hour
Andriaovsky was immanent about me, in the whole of me, in the last fibre
and cell of me, in all my thoughts, from my consciousness that I was
sitting there at my own writing-table to my conception of God Himself.

It may seem strange--whether it does so or not will depend on the kind
 of man you yourself are--that as long as I was content to recognise this
immanence of Andriaovsky's enlarged and liberated spirit, _and not to
dispute with it_, I found nothing but mildness and benignity in my
hazardous experience. More, I felt that, in that clear region to which
in my intensified state of consciousness I was lifted, I was able to move
(I must trust you to understand the word aright) without restraint, nay,
with an amplitude and freedom of movement past setting down, as long as
I was satisfied to possess my soul in quiescence. The state itself was
inimical neither to my safety nor to my sanity. I was conscious of it
as a transposition into another register of the scale of life. And, as
in this life we move in ignorance and safety only by accepting the
hair-balance of stupendous forces, so now I felt that my safety depended
on my observation of the conditions that governed that region of light
and clarity and Law.

Of clarity and Law; save in the terms of the great abstractions I may not
speak of it. And that is well-nigh equal to saying that I may not speak
of it at all. The hand that would have written of it lay (I never for one
moment ceased to be conscious) heavy as stone on a writing-table in some
spot quite accidental in my new sense of locality; the tongue that would
have spoken of it seemed to slumber in my mouth. And I knew that both
dumbness and stillness were proper. Their opposites would have convicted
me (the flat and earthly comparison must be allowed) of intrusion into
some Place of beauty and serenity for which the soilure of my birth
disqualified me.

For beauty and serenity, austerity and benignity and peace, were the
conditions of that Place. To other Places belonged the wingy and robed
and starry and golden things that made the heavens of other lives than
that which I had shared with Andriaovsky; here, white and shapely Truth
alone reigned. None questioned, for all knew; none sinned, for sin was
already judged and punished in its committal; none demonstrated, for
all things were evident; and those eager to justify themselves were
permitted no farther than the threshold....

And it was to justify, to challenge, to maintain a right, that I was
there. I was there to wrestle, if needs be, with the Angel of that Place,
to vanquish him or to compel him to reveal himself. I had not been
summoned; I had thrust myself there unbidden. There was a moment in which
I noticed that my writing-table was a little more than ordinarily removed
from me, but very little, not more than if I had been looking over the
shoulder of another writer at it; and I saw my chapter heading. At the
sight of it something of the egotism that had prompted me to write it
stirred in me again; everywhere was Andriaovsky's calm face, priest and
Angel himself; and I became conscious that I was trying to write a
phrase. I also became conscious that I was being pitifully warned not to
do so...

Suddenly my whole being was flooded with a frightful pang of pain.

It was not local. It was no more to be located than the other immanences
of which I have spoken. It was Pain, pure, essential, dissociated; and
with the coming of it that fair Place had grown suddenly horrible and
black.

And I knew that the shock came _of my own resistance_, and that it would
cease to afflict me the moment I ceased to resist.

I did cease. Instantly the pain passed. But as when a knife is plucked
from a wound, so only with its passing did I shriek aloud....

For I know not how many minutes I sat in stupefaction. Then, as with
earthly pains, that are assuaged with the passing of accidental time, the
memory of it softened a little. Blunderingly and only half consciously, I
cast about to collect my dispersed force.

For--already I was conscious of it--there still remained one claim that
even in thought I had not advanced. I would, were I permitted, still
write that "Life," but, since it was decreed so, I would no longer urge
that in writing it I justified myself. So I might but write it, I would
embrace my own portion, the portion of doom; yea, though it should be a
pressing of the searing-iron to my lips, I would embrace it; my name
should not appear. For the mere sake of the man I had loved I would write
it, in self-scorn and abasement, humbly craving not to be denied....

_"Oh, let me but do for Love of you what a sinful man can!"_ I
groaned....

A moment later I had again striven to do so. So do we all, when we
think that out of a poor human Love we can alter the Laws by which our
state exists. And with such a hideous anguish as was again mine are we
visited....

And I knew now what that anguish was. It was the twining of body from
spirit that is called the bitterness of Death; for not all of the body
are the pangs of that severance. With that terrible sword of impersonal
Pain the God of Peace makes sorrowful war that Peace may come again. With
its flame He ringed the bastions of Heaven when Satan made assault. Only
on the Gorgon-image of that Pain in the shield may weak man look; and
its blaze and ire had permeated with deadly nearness the "everywhere"
where I was...

"_Oh, not for Love? Not even for Love?_" broke the agonised question from
me....

The next moment I had ceased, and ceased for ever, to resist.
Instantaneously the terrible flashing of that sword became no more
than the play of lightning one sees far away in the wide cloudfields
on a peaceful summer's twilight. I felt a gentle and overpowering
sleep coming over me; and as it folded me about I saw, with the last
look of my eyes, my own figure, busily writing at the table.

Had I, then, prevailed? Had Pain so purged me that I was permitted to
finish my task? And had my tortured cry, "Oh, not even for Love?"
been heard?

I did not know.

       *        *        *        *        *

I came to myself to find that my head had fallen on my desk. The light
still shone within its pearly shade, and in the penumbra of its shadow
the portrait of Andriaovsky occupied its accustomed place. About me were
my papers, and my pen lay where it had fallen from my hand.

At first I did not look at my papers. I merely saw that the uppermost of
them was written on. But presently I took it up, and looked at it
stupidly. Then, with no memory at all of how I had come to write what was
upon it, I put it down again.

It was indeed a completion.

But it was not of Andriaovsky's "Life" that it was the completion. As you
may or may not know, Andriaovsky's "Life" is written by "his friend John
Schofield." I had been allowed to write, but it was my own condemnation
that, in sadness and obedience, in the absence of wrath but also in the
absence of mercy, I had written. By the Law I had broken I was broken in
my turn. It was the draft for the fifth series of _The Cases of Martin
Renard_.

No, not for Love--not even for Love....
 

Sample text: 105
﻿1


No windows broke any of the four plain walls of the office; there was no
focus of outer-world sunlight on the desk there. Yet the five disks set
out on its surface appeared to glow--perhaps the heat of the mischief
they could cause ... had caused ... blazed in them.

But fanciful imaginings did not cushion or veil cold, hard fact. Dr.
Gordon Ashe, one of the four men peering unhappily at the display, shook
his head slightly as if to free his mind of such cobwebs.

His neighbor to the right, Colonel Kelgarries, leaned forward to ask
harshly: "No chance of a mistake?"

"You saw the detector." The thin gray string of a man behind the desk
answered with chill precision. "No, no possible mistake. These five have
definitely been snooped."

"And two choices among them," Ashe murmured. That was the important
point now.

"I thought these were under maximum security," Kelgarries challenged the
gray man.

Florian Waldour's remote expression did not change. "Every possible
precaution was in force. There was a sleeper--a hidden
agent--planted----"

"Who?" Kelgarries demanded.

Ashe glanced around at his three companions--Kelgarries, colonel in
command of one sector of Project Star, Florian Waldour, the security
head on the station, Dr. James Ruthven....

"Camdon!" he said, hardly able to believe this answer to which logic had
led him.

Waldour nodded.

For the first time since he had known and worked with Kelgarries Ashe
saw him display open astonishment.

"Camdon? But he was sent us by--" The colonel's eyes narrowed. "He must
have been sent.... There were too many cross checks to fake that!"

"Oh, he was sent, all right." For the first time there was a note of
emotion in Waldour's voice. "He was a sleeper, a very deep sleeper. They
must have planted him a full twenty-five or thirty years ago. He's been
just what he claimed to be as long as that."

"Well, he certainly was worth their time and trouble, wasn't he?" James
Ruthven's voice was a growling rumble. He sucked in thick lips,
continuing to stare at the disks. "How long ago were these snooped?"

Ashe's thoughts turned swiftly from the enormity of the betrayal to that
important point. The time element--that was the primary concern now that
the damage was done, and they knew it.

"That's one thing we don't know." Waldour's reply came slowly as if he
hated the admission.

"We'll be safer, then, if we presume the very earliest period."
Ruthven's statement was as ruthless in its implications as the shock
they had had when Waldour announced the disaster.

"Eighteen months ago?" Ashe protested.

But Ruthven was nodding. "Camdon was in on this from the very first.
We've had the tapes in and out for study all that time, and the new
detector against snooping was not put in service until two weeks ago.
This case came up on the first checking round, didn't it?" he asked
Waldour.

"First check," the security man agreed. "Camdon left the base six days
ago. But he has been in and out on his liaison duties from the first."

"He had to go through those search points every time," Kelgarries
protested. "Thought nothing could get through those." The colonel
brightened. "Maybe he got his snooper films and then couldn't take them
off base. Have his quarters been turned out?"

Waldour's lips lifted in a grimace of exasperation. "Please, Colonel,"
he said wearily, "this is not a kindergarten exercise. In confirmation
of his success, listen...." He touched a button on his desk and out of
the air came the emotionless chant of a newscaster.

"Fears for the safety of Lassiter Camdon, space expediter for the
Western Conference Space Council, have been confirmed by the discovery
of burned wreckage in the mountains. Mr. Camdon was returning from a
mission to the Star Laboratory when his plane lost contact with Ragnor
Field. Reports of a storm in that vicinity immediately raised concern--"
Waldour snapped off the voice.

"True--or a cover for his escape?" Kelgarries wondered aloud.

"Could be either. They may have deliberately written him off when they
had all they wanted," Waldour acknowledged. "But to get back to our
troubles--Dr. Ruthven is right to assume the worst. I believe we can
only insure the recovery of our project by thinking that these tapes
were snooped anywhere from eighteen months ago to last week. And we must
work accordingly!"

There was silence in the room as they all considered that. Ashe slipped
down in his chair, his thoughts enmeshed in memories. First there had
been Operation Retrograde, when specially trained "time agents" had
shuttled back and forth in history, striving to locate and track down
the mysterious source of alien knowledge which the eastern Communistic
nations had suddenly begun to use.

Ashe himself and a younger partner, Ross Murdock, had been part of the
final action which had solved the mystery, having traced that source of
knowledge not to an earlier and forgotten Terran civilization but to
wrecked spaceships from an eon-old galactic empire--an empire which had
flourished when glacial ice covered most of Europe and northern America
and Terrans were cave-dwelling primitives. Murdock, trapped by the Reds
in one of those wrecked ships, had inadvertently summoned its original
owners, who had descended to trace--through the Russian time
stations--the looters of their wrecks, destroying the whole Red
time-travel system.

But the aliens had not chanced on the parallel western system. And a
year later that had been put into Project Folsom One. Again Ashe,
Murdock, and a newcomer, the Apache Travis Fox, had gone back into time
to the Arizona of the Folsom hunters, discovering what they wanted--two
ships, one wrecked, the other intact. And when the full efforts of the
project had been centered on bringing the intact ship back into the
present, chance had triggered controls set by the dead alien commander.
A party of four, Ashe, Murdock, Fox, and a technician, had then made an
involuntary voyage into space, touching three worlds on which the
galactic civilization of the far past was now marked only by ruins.

Voyage tape fed into the controls of the ship had taken the men, and,
when rewound, had--by a miracle--returned them to Terra with a cargo of
similar tapes found in a building on a world which might have been the
central capital for a government comprised not of countries or of worlds
but of solar systems. Tapes--each one the key to another planet.

And that ancient galactic knowledge was treasure such as the Terrans had
never dreamed of possessing, though there were the attendant fears that
such discoveries could be weapons in enemy hands. There had been an
enforced sharing with other nations of tapes chosen at random at a great
drawing. And each nation secretly remained convinced that, in spite of
the untold riches it might hold as a result of chance, its rivals had
done better. Right at this moment, Ashe did not in the least doubt,
there were agents of his own party intent on accomplishing at the Red
project just what Camdon had done there. However, that did not help in
solving their present dilemma concerning Operation Cochise, one part of
their project, but perhaps the most important now.

Some of the tapes were duds, either too damaged to be useful, or set for
worlds hostile to Terrans lacking the equipment the earlier
star-traveling race had had at its command. Of the five tapes they now
knew had been snooped, three would be useless to the enemy.

But one of the remaining two.... Ashe frowned. One was the goal toward
which they had been working feverishly for a full twelve months. To
plant a colony across the gulf of space--a successful colony--later to
be used as a steppingstone to other worlds....

"So we have to move faster." Ruthven's comment reached Ashe through his
stream of memories.

"I thought you required at least three more months to conclude personnel
training," Waldour observed.

Ruthven lifted a fat hand, running the nail of a broad thumb back and
forth across his lower lip in a habitual gesture Ashe had learned to
mistrust. As the latter stiffened, bracing for a battle of wills, he saw
Kelgarries come alert too. At least the colonel more often than not was
ready to counter Ruthven's demands.

"We test and we test," said the fat man. "Always we test. We move like
turtles when it would be better to race like greyhounds. There is such a
thing as overcaution, as I have said from the first. One would
think"--his accusing glance included Ashe and Kelgarries--"that there
had never been any improvising in this project, that all had always been
done by the book. I say that this is the time we must take the big
gamble, or else we may find we have been outbid for space entirely. Let
those others discover even one alien installation they can master and--"
his thumb shifted from his lip, grinding down on the desk top as if it
were crushing some venturesome but entirely unimportant insect--"and we
are finished before we really begin."

There were a number of men in the project who would agree with that,
Ashe knew. And a greater number in the country and conference at large.
The public was used to reckless gambles which paid off, and there had
been enough of those in the past to give an impressive argument for
that point of view. But Ashe, himself, could not agree to a speed-up. He
had been out among the stars, shaved disaster too closely because the
proper training had not been given.

"I shall report that I advise a take-off within a week," Ruthven was
continuing. "To the council I shall say that--"

"And I do not agree!" Ashe cut in. He glanced at Kelgarries for the
quick backing he expected, but instead there was a lengthening moment of
silence. Then the colonel spread out his hands and said sullenly:

"I don't agree either, but I don't have the final say-so. Ashe, what
would be needed to speed up any take-off?"

It was Ruthven who replied. "We can use the Redax, as I have said from
the start."

Ashe straightened, his mouth tight, his eyes hard and angry.

"And I'll protest that ... to the council! Man, we're dealing with human
beings--selected volunteers, men who trust us--not with laboratory
animals!"

Ruthven's thick lips pouted into what was close to a smile of derision.
"Always the sentimentalists, you experts in the past! Tell me, Dr. Ashe,
were you always so thoughtful of your men when you sent agents back into
time? And certainly a voyage into space is less a risk than time travel.
These volunteers know what they have signed for. They will be ready----"

"Then you propose telling them about the use of Redax--what it does to a
man's mind?" countered Ashe.

"Certainly. They will receive all necessary instructions."

Ashe was not satisfied and he would have spoken again, but Kelgarries
interrupted:

"If it comes to that, none of us here has any right to make final
decisions. Waldour has already sent in his report about the snoop. We'll
have to await orders from the council."

Ruthven levered himself out of his chair, his solid bulk stretching his
uniform coveralls. "That is correct, Colonel. In the meantime I would
suggest we all check to see what can be done to speed up each one's
portion of labor." Without another word, he tramped to the door.

Waldour eyed the other two with mounting impatience. It was plain he had
work to do and wanted them to leave. But Ashe was reluctant. He had a
feeling that matters were slipping out of his control, that he was about
to face a crisis which was somehow worse than just a major security
leak. Was the enemy always on the other side of the world? Or could he
wear the same uniform, even share the same goals?

In the outer corridor he still hesitated, and Kelgarries, a step or so
in advance, looked back over his shoulder impatiently.

"There's no use fighting--our hands are tied." His words were slurred,
almost as if he wanted to disown them.

"Then you'll agree to use the Redax?" For the second time within the
hour Ashe felt as if he had taken a step only to have firm earth turn
into slippery, shifting sand underfoot.

"It isn't a matter of my agreeing. It may be a matter of getting through
or not getting through--now. If they've had eighteen months, or even
twelve...!" The colonel's fingers balled into a fist. "And _they_ won't
be delayed by any humanitarian reasoning----"

"Then you believe Ruthven will win the council's approval?"

"When you are dealing with frightened men, you're talking to ears closed
to anything but what they want to hear. After all, we can't prove that
the Redax will be harmful."

"But we've only used it under rigidly controlled conditions. To speed up
the process would mean a total disregard of those controls. Snapping a
party of men and women back into their racial past and holding them
there for too long a period...." Ashe shook his head.

"You have been in Operation Retrograde from the start, and we've been
remarkably successful----"

"Operating in a different way, educating picked men to return to certain
points in history where their particular temperaments and
characteristics fitted the roles they were selected to play, yes. And
even then we had our percentage of failures. But to try this--returning
people not physically into time, but _mentally and emotionally_ into
prototypes of their ancestors--that's something else again. The Apaches
have volunteered, and they've been passed by the psychologists and the
testers. But they're Americans of today, not tribal nomads of two or
three hundred years ago. If you break down some barriers, you might just
end up breaking them all."

Kelgarries was scowling. "You mean--they might revert utterly, have no
contact with the present at all?"

"That's just what I do mean. Education and training, yes, but full
awakening of racial memories, no. The two branches of conditioning
should go slowly and hand in hand, otherwise--real trouble!"

"Only we no longer have the time to go slow. I'm certain Ruthven will be
able to push this through--with Waldour's report to back him."

"Then we'll have to warn Fox and the rest. They must be given a choice
in the matter."

"Ruthven said that would be done." The colonel did not sound convinced
of that.

Ashe snorted. "If I hear him telling them, I'll believe it!"

"I wonder whether we can...."

Ashe half turned and frowned at the colonel. "What do you mean?"

"You said yourself that we had our failures in time travel. We expected
those, accepted them, even when they hurt. When we asked for volunteers
for this project we had to make them understand that there was a heavy
element of risk involved. Three teams of recruits--the Eskimos from
Point Barren, the Apaches, and the Islanders--all picked because their
people had a high survival rating in the past, to be colonists on widely
different types of planets. Well, the Eskimos and the Islanders aren't
matched to any of the worlds on those snooped tapes, but Topaz is
waiting for the Apaches. And we may have to move them in there in a
hurry. It's a rotten gamble any way you see it!"

"I'll appeal directly to the council."

Kelgarries shrugged. "All right. You have my backing."

"But you believe such an effort hopeless?"

"You know the red-tape merchants. You'll have to move fast if you want
to beat Ruthven. He's probably on a straight line now to Stanton,
Reese, and Margate. This is what he has been waiting for!"

"There are the news syndicates; public opinion would back us----"

"You don't mean that, of course." Kelgarries was suddenly coldly remote.

Ashe flushed under the heavy brown which overlay his regular features.
To threaten a silence break was near blasphemy here. He ran both hands
down the fabric covering his thighs as if to rub away some soil on his
palms.

"No," he replied heavily, his voice dull. "I guess I don't. I'll contact
Hough and hope for the best."

"Meanwhile," Kelgarries spoke briskly, "we'll do what we can to speed up
the program as it now stands. I suggest you take off for New York within
the hour----"

"Me? Why?" Ashe asked with a trace of suspicion.

"Because I can't leave without acting directly against orders, and that
would put us wrong immediately. You see Hough and talk to him
personally--put it to him straight. He'll have to have all the facts if
he's going to counter any move from Stanton before the council. You know
every argument we can use and all the proof on our side, and you're
authority enough to make it count."

"If I can do all that, I will." Ashe was alert and eager. The colonel,
seeing his change of expression, felt easier.

But Kelgarries stood a moment watching Ashe as he hurried down a side
corridor, before he moved on slowly to his own box of office. Once
inside he sat for a long unhappy time staring at the wall and seeing
nothing but the pictures produced by his thoughts. Then he pressed a
button and read off the symbols which flashed on a small visa-screen
set in his desk. Another button pushed, and he picked up a hand mike to
relay an order which might postpone trouble for a while. Ashe was far
too valuable a man to lose, and his emotions could boil him straight
into disaster over this.

"Bidwell--reschedule Team A. They are to go to the Hypno-Lab instead of
the reserve in ten minutes."

Releasing the mike, he again stared at the wall. No one dared interrupt
a hypno-training period, and this one would last three hours. Ashe could
not possibly see the trainees before he left for New York. And that
would remove one temptation from his path--he would not talk at the
wrong time.

Kelgarries' mouth twisted sourly. He had no pride in what he was doing.
And he was perfectly certain that Ruthven would win and that Ashe's
fears of Redax were well founded. It all came back to the old basic
tenet of the service: the end justified the means. They must use every
method and man under their control to make sure that Topaz would remain
a western possession, even though that strange planet now swung far
beyond the sky which covered both the western and eastern alliances on
Terra. Time had run out too fast; they were being forced to play what
cards they held, even though those might be very low ones. Ashe would be
back, but not, Kelgarries hoped, until this had been decided one way or
another. Not until this was finished.

Finished! Kelgarries blinked at the wall. Perhaps _they_ were finished,
too. No one would know until the transport ship landed on that other
world which appeared on the direction tape symbolized by a jewellike
disk of gold-brown which had given it the code name of Topaz.


2


There were an even dozen of the air-borne guardians, each following the
swing of its own orbital path just within the atmospheric envelope of
the planet which glowed as a great bronze-golden gem in the four-world
system of a yellow star. The globes had been launched to form a web of
protection around Topaz six months earlier, and the highest skill had
gone into their production. Just as contact mines sown in a harbor could
close that landfall to ships not knowing the secret channel, so was this
world supposedly closed to any spaceship not equipped with the signal to
ward off the sphere missiles.

That was the theory of the new off-world settlers whose protection they
were to be, already tested as well as possible, but as yet not put to
the ultimate proof. The small bright globes spun undisturbed across a
two-mooned sky at night and made reassuring blips on an installation
screen by day.

Then a thirteenth object winked into being, began the encircling,
closing spiral of descent. A sphere resembling the warden-globes, it was
a hundred times their size, and its orbit was purposefully controlled
by instruments under the eye and hand of a human pilot.

Four men were strapped down on cushioned sling-seats in the control
cabin of the Western Alliance ship, two hanging where their fingers
might reach buttons and levers, the others merely passengers, their own
labor waiting for the time when they would set down on the alien soil of
Topaz. The planet hung there in their visa-screen, richly beautiful in
its amber gold, growing larger, nearer, so that they could pick out
features of seas, continents, mountain ranges, which had been studied on
tape until they were familiar, yet now were strangely unfamiliar too.

One of the warden-globes alerted, oscillated in its set path, whirled
faster as its delicate interior mechanisms responded to the awakening
spark which would send it on its mission of destruction. A relay
clicked, but for the smallest fraction of a millimeter failed to set the
proper course. On the instrument, far below, which checked the globe's
new course the mistake was not noted.

The screen of the ship spiraling toward Topaz registered a path which
would bring it into violent contact with the globe. They were still some
hundreds of miles apart when the alarm rang. The pilot's hand clawed out
at the bank of controls; under the almost intolerable pressure of their
descent, there was so little he could do. His crooked fingers fell back
powerlessly from the buttons and levers; his mouth was a twisted grimace
of bleak acceptance as the beat of the signal increased.

One of the passengers forced his head around on the padded rest, fought
to form words, to speak to his companion. The other was staring ahead at
the screen, his thick lips wide and flat against his teeth in a snarl
of rage.

"They ... are ... here...."

Ruthven paid no attention to the obvious as stated by his fellow
scientist. His fury was a red, pulsing thing inside him, fed by his own
helplessness. To be pinned here so near his goal, fastened up as a
target for an inanimate but cunningly fashioned weapon, ate into him
like a stream of deadly acid. His big gamble would puff out in a blast
of fire to light up Topaz's sky, with nothing left--nothing. On the
armrest of his sling-seat his nails scratched deep.

The four men in the control cabin could only sit and watch, waiting for
the rendezvous which would blot them out. Ruthven's flaming anger was a
futile blaze. His companion in the passenger seat had closed his eyes,
his lips moving soundlessly in an expression of his own scattered
thoughts. The pilot and his assistant divided their attention between
the screen, with its appalling message, and the controls they could not
effectively use, feverishly seeking a way out in these last moments.

Below them in the bowl of the ship were those who would not know the end
consciously--save in one compartment. In a padded cage a prick-eared
head stirred where it rested on forepaws, slitted eyes blinked, aware
not only of familiar surroundings, but also of the tension and fear
generated by human minds and emotions levels above. A pointed nose
raised, and there was a growling deep in a throat covered with thick
buff-gray hair.

The growl aroused another similar captive. Knowing yellow eyes met
yellow eyes. An intelligence, which was certainly not that of the animal
body which contained it, fought down instinct raging to send both those
bodies hurtling at the fastenings of the twin cages. Curiosity and the
ability to adapt had been bred into both from time immemorial. Then
something else had been added to sly and cunning brains. A step up had
been taken--to weld intelligence to cunning, connect thought to
instinct.

More than a generation earlier mankind had chosen barren desert--the
"white sands" of New Mexico--as a testing ground for atomic experiments.
Humankind could be barred, warded out of the radiation limits; the
natural desert dwellers, four-footed and winged, could not be so
controlled.

For thousands of years, since the first southward roving Amerindian
tribes had met with their kind, there had been a hunter of the open
country, a smaller cousin of the wolf, whose natural abilities had made
an undeniable impression on the human mind. He was in countless Indian
legends as the Shaper or the Trickster, sometimes friend, sometimes
enemy. Godling for some tribes, father of all evil for others. In the
wealth of tales the coyote, above all other animals, had a firm place.

Driven by the press of civilization into the badlands and deserts,
fought with poison, gun, and trap, the coyote had survived, adapting to
new ways with all his legendary cunning. Those who had reviled him as
vermin had unwillingly added to the folklore which surrounded him,
telling their own tales of robbed traps, skillful escapes. He continued
to be a trickster, laughing on moonlit nights from the tops of ridges at
those who would hunt him down.

Then, close to the end of the twentieth century, when myths were
scoffed at, the stories of the coyote's slyness began once more on a
fantastic scale. And finally scientists were sufficiently intrigued to
seek out this creature that seemed to display in truth all the abilities
credited to his immortal namesake by pre-Columbian tribes.

What they discovered was indeed shattering to certain closed minds. For
the coyote had not only adapted to the country of the white sands; he
had evolved into something which could not be dismissed as an animal,
clever and cunning, but limited to beast range. Six cubs had been
brought back on the first expedition, coyote in body, their developing
minds different. The grandchildren of those cubs were now in the ship's
cages, their mutated senses alert, ready for the slightest chance of
escape. Sent to Topaz as eyes and ears for less keenly endowed humans,
they were not completely under the domination of man. The range of their
mental powers was still uncomprehended by those who had bred, trained,
and worked with them from the days their eyes had opened and they had
taken their first wobbly steps away from their dams.

The male growled again, his lips wrinkling back in a snarl as the
emanations of fear from the men he could not see reached panic peak. He
still crouched, belly flat, on the protecting pads of his cage; but he
strove now to wriggle closer to the door, just as his mate made the same
effort.

Between the animals and those in the control cabin lay the others--forty
of them. Their bodies were cushioned and protected with every ingenious
device known to those who had placed them there so many weeks earlier.
Their minds were free of the ship, roving into places where men had not
trod before, a territory potentially more dangerous than any solid earth
could ever be.

Operation Retrograde had returned men bodily into the past, sending
agents to hunt mammoths, follow the roads of the Bronze Age traders,
ride with Attila and Genghis Khan, pull bows among the archers of
ancient Egypt. But Redax returned men in mind to the paths of their
ancestors, or this was the theory. And those who slept here and now in
their narrow boxes, lay under its government, while the men who had
arbitrarily set them so could only assume they were actually reliving
the lives of Apache nomads in the wide southwestern wastes of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Above, the pilot's hand pushed out again, fighting the pressure to reach
one particular button. That, too, had been a last-minute addition, an
experiment which had only had partial testing. To use it was the final
move he could make, and he was already half convinced of its
uselessness.

With no faith and only a very wan hope, he sent that round of metal
flush with the board. What followed no one ever lived to explain.

On the planet the installation which tracked the missiles flashed on a
screen bright enough to blind momentarily the duty man on watch, and its
tracker was shaken off course. When it jiggled back into line it was no
longer the efficient eye-in-the-sky it had been, though its tenders were
not to realize that for an important minute or two.

While the ship, now out of control, sped in dizzy whirls toward Topaz,
engines fought blindly to stabilize, to re-establish their functions.
Some succeeded, some wobbled in and out of the danger zone, two failed.
And in the control cabin three dead men spun in prisoning seats.

Dr. James Ruthven, blood bubbling from his lips with every shallow
breath he could draw, fought the stealthy tide of blackness which crept
up his brain, his stubborn will holding to rags of consciousness,
refusing to acknowledge the pain of his fatally injured body.

The orbiting ship was on an erratic path. Slowly the machines were
correcting, relays clicking, striving to bring it to a landing under
auto-pilot. All the ingenuity built into a mechanical brain was now
centered in landing the globe.

It was not a good landing, in fact a very bad one, for the sphere
touched a mountain side, scraped down rocks, shearing away a portion of
its outer bulk. But the mountain barrier was now between it and the base
from which the missiles had been launched, and the crash had not been
recorded on that tracking instrument. So far as the watchers several
hundred miles away knew, the warden in the sky had performed as
promised. Their first line of defense had proven satisfactory, and there
had been no unauthorized landing on Topaz.

In the wreckage of the control cabin Ruthven pawed at the fastenings of
his sling-chair. He no longer tried to suppress the moans every effort
tore out of him. Time held the whip, drove him. He rolled from his seat
to the floor, lay there gasping, as again he fought doggedly to remain
above the waves--those frightening, fast-coming waves of dark faintness.

Somehow he was crawling, crawling along a tilted surface until he gained
the well where the ladder to the lower section hung, now at an acute
angle. It was that angle which helped him to the next level.

He was too dazed to realize the meaning of the crumpled bulkheads. There
was a spur of bare rock under his hands as he edged over and around
twisted metal. The moans were now a gobbling, burbling, almost
continuous cry as he reached his goal--a small cabin still intact.

For long moments of anguish he paused by the chair there, afraid that he
could not make the last effort, raise his almost inert bulk up to the
point where he could reach the Redax release. For a second of unusual
clarity he wondered if there was any reason for this supreme ordeal,
whether any of the sleepers could be aroused. This might now be a ship
of the dead.

His right hand, his arm, and finally his bulk over the seat, he braced
himself and brought his left hand up. He could not use any of the
fingers; it was like lifting numb, heavy weights. But he lurched
forward, swept the unfeeling lump of cold flesh down against the release
in a gesture which he knew must be his final move. And, as he fell back
to the floor, Dr. Ruthven could not be certain whether he had succeeded
or failed. He tried to screw his head around, to focus his eyes upward
at that switch. Was it down or still stubbornly up, locking the sleepers
into confinement? But there was a fog between; he could not see it--or
anything.

The light in the cabin flickered, was gone as another circuit in the
broken ship failed. It was dark, too, in the small cubby below which
housed the two cages. Chance, which had snuffed out nineteen lives in
the space globe, had missed ripping open that cabin on the mountain
side. Five yards down the corridor the outside fabric of the ship was
split wide open, the crisp air native to Topaz entering, sending a
message to two keen noses through the combination of odors now pervading
the wreckage.

And the male coyote went into action. Days ago he had managed to work
loose the lower end of the mesh which fronted his cage, but his mind had
told him that a sortie inside the ship was valueless. The odd rapport
he'd had with the human brains, unknown to them, had operated to keep
him to the old role of cunning deception, which in the past had saved
countless of his species from sudden and violent death. Now with teeth
and paws he went diligently to work, urged on by the whines of his mate,
that tantalizing smell of an outside world tickling their nostrils--a
wild world, lacking the taint of man-places.

He slipped under the loosened mesh and stood up to paw at the front of
the female's cage. One forepaw caught in the latch and pressed it down,
and the weight of the door swung against him. Together they were free
now to reach the corridor and see ahead the subdued light of a strange
moon beckoning them on into the open.

The female, always more cautious than her mate, lingered behind as he
trotted forward, his ears a-prick with curiosity. Their training had
been the same since cubhood--to range and explore, but always in the
company and at the order of man. This was not according to the pattern
she knew, and she was suspicious. But to her sensitive nose the smell of
the ship was an offense, and the puffs of breeze from without enticing.
Her mate had already slipped through the break; now he barked with
excitement and wonder, and she trotted on to join him.

Above, the Redax, which had never been intended to stand rough usage,
proved to be a better survivor of the crash than most of the other
installations. Power purred along a network of lines, activated beams,
turned off and on a series of fixtures in those coffin-beds. For five of
the sleepers--nothing. The cabin which had held them was a flattened
smear against the mountain side. Three more half aroused, choked, fought
for life and breath in a darkness which was a mercifully short
nightmare, and succumbed.

But in the cabin nearest the rent through which the coyotes had escaped,
a young man sat up abruptly, looking into the dark with wide-open,
terror-haunted eyes. He clawed for purchase against the smooth edge of
the box in which he had lain, somehow got to his knees, weaving weakly
back and forth, and half fell, half pushed to the floor where he could
stand only by keeping his hold on the box.

Dazed, sick, weak, he swayed there, aware only of himself and his own
sensations. There were small sounds in the dark, a stilled moan, a
gasping sigh. But that meant nothing. Within him grew a compulsion to be
out of this place, his terror making him lurch forward.

His flailing hand rapped painfully against an upright surface which his
questing fingers identified hazily as an exit. Unconsciously he fumbled
along the surface of the door until it gave under that weak pressure.
Then he was out, his head swimming, drawn by the light behind the wall
rent.

He progressed toward that in a scrambling crawl, making his way over the
splintered skin of the globe. Then he dropped with a jarring thud onto
the mound of earth the ship had pushed before it during its downward
slide. Limply he tumbled on in a small cascade of clods and sand,
hitting against a less movable rock with force enough to roll him over
on his back and stun him again.

The second and smaller moon of Topaz swung brightly through the sky, its
weird green rays making the blood-streaked face of the explorer an alien
mask. It had passed well on to the horizon, and its large yellow
companion had risen when a yapping broke the small sounds of the night.

As the _yipp, yipp, yipp_ arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, putting
one hand to his head. His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him and
sat up. Behind him was the torn and ripped ship, but he did not look
back at it.

Instead, he got to his feet and staggered out into the direct path of
the moonlight. Inside his brain there was a whirl of thoughts, memories,
emotions. Perhaps Ruthven or one of his assistants could have explained
that chaotic mixture for what it was. But for all practical purposes
Travis Fox--Amerindian Time Agent, member of Team A, Operation
Cochise--was far less of a thinking animal now than the two coyotes
paying their ritual addresses to a moon which was not the one of their
vanished homeland.

Travis wavered on, drawn somehow by that howling. It was familiar, a
thread of something real through all the broken clutter in his head. He
stumbled, fell, crawled up again, but he kept on.

Above, the female coyote lowered her head, drew a test sniff of a new
scent. She recognized that as part of the proper way of life. She yapped
once at her mate, but he was absorbed in his night song, his muzzle
pointed moonward as he voiced a fine wailing.

Travis tripped, pitched forward on his hands and knees, and felt the jar
of such a landing shoot up his stiffened forearms. He tried to get up,
but his body only twisted, so he landed on his back and lay looking up
at the moon.

A strong, familiar odor ... then a shadow looming above him. Hot breath
against his cheek, and the swift sweep of an animal tongue on his face.
He flung up his hand, gripped thick fur, and held on as if he had found
one anchor of sanity in a world gone completely mad.


3


Travis, one knee braced against the red earth, blinked as he parted a
screen of tall rust-brown grass with cautious fingers to look out into a
valley where golden mist clouded most of the landscape. His head ached
with dull persistence, the pain fostered in some way by his own
bewilderment. To study the land ahead was like trying to see through one
picture interposed over another and far different one. He knew what
ought to be there, but what was before him was very dissimilar.

A buff-gray shape flitted through the tall cover grass, and Travis
tensed. _Mba'a_--coyote? Or were these companions of his actually
_ga-n_, spirits who could choose their shape at will and had, oddly,
this time assumed the bodies of man's tricky enemy? Were they
_ndendai_--enemies--or _dalaanbiyat'i_, allies? In this mad world he did
not know.

_Ei'dik'e?_ His mind formed a word he did not speak: Friend?

Yellow eyes met his directly. Dimly he had been aware, ever since
awaking in this strange wilderness with the coming of morning light,
that the four-footed ones trotting with him as he walked aimlessly had
unbeastlike traits. Not only did they face him eye-to-eye, but in some
ways they appeared able to read his thoughts.

He had longed for water to ease the burning in his throat, the
ever-present pain in his head, and the creatures had nudged him in
another direction, bringing him to a pool where he had mouthed liquid
with a strange sweet, but not unpleasant taste.

Now he had given them names, names which had come out of the welter of
dreams which shadowed his stumbling journey across this weird country.

Nalik'ideyu (Maiden-Who-Walks-Ridges) was the female who continued to
shepherd him along, never venturing too far from his side. Naginlta
(He-Who-Scouts-Ahead) was the male who did just that, disappearing at
long intervals and then returning to face the man and his mate as if
conveying some report necessary to their journey.

It was Nalik'ideyu who sought out Travis now, her red tongue lolling
from her mouth as she panted. Not from exertion, he was certain of that.
No, she was excited and eager ... on the hunt! That was it--a hunt!

Travis' own tongue ran across his lips as an impression hit him with
feral force. There was meat--rich, fresh--just ahead. Meat that lived,
waiting to be killed. Inside him his own avid hunger roused, shaking him
farther out of the crusting dream.

His hands went to his waist, but the groping fingers did not find what
vague memory told him should be there--a belt, heavy with knife in
sheath.

He examined his own body with attention to find he was adequately
covered by breeches of a smooth, dull brown material which blended well
with the vegetation about him. He wore a loose shirt, belted in at the
narrow waist by a folded strip of cloth, the ends of which fluttered
free. On his feet were tall moccasins, the leg pieces extending some
distance up his calves, the toes turned up in rounded points.

Some of this he found familiar, but these were fragments of memory;
again his mind fitted one picture above another. One thing he did know
for sure--he had no weapons. And that realization struck home with a
thrust of real and terrible fear which tore away more of the
bewilderment cloaking his mind.

Nalik'ideyu was impatient. Having advanced a step or two, she now looked
back at him over her shoulder, yellow eyes slitted, her demand on him as
instant and real as if she had voiced understandable words. Meat was
waiting, and she was hungry. Also she expected Travis to aid in the
hunt--at once.

Though he could not match her fluid grace in moving through the grass,
Travis followed her, keeping to cover. He shook his head vigorously, in
spite of the stab of pain the motion cost him, and paid more attention
to his surroundings. It was apparent that the earth under him, the grass
around, the valley of the golden haze, were all real, not part of a
dream. Therefore that other countryside which he kept seeing in a
ghostly fashion was a hallucination.

Even the air which he drew into his lungs and expelled again, had a
strange smell, or was it taste? He could not be sure which. He knew that
hypno-training could produce queer side effects, but ... this....

Travis paused, staring unseeingly before him at the grass still waving
from the coyote's passage. Hypno-training! What was that? Now three
pictures fought to focus in his mind: the two landscapes which did not
match and a shadowy third. He shook his head again, his hands to his
temples. This--this only was real: the ground, the grass, the valley,
the hunger in him, the hunt waiting....

He forced himself to concentrate on the immediate present and the
portion of world he could see, feel, scent, which lay here and now about
him.

The grass grew shorter as he proceeded in Nalik'ideyu's wake. But the
haze was not thinning. It seemed to hang in patches, and when he
ventured through the edge of a patch it was like creeping through a fog
of golden, dancing motes with here and there a glittering speck whirling
and darting like a living thing. Masked by the stuff, Travis reached a
line of brush and sniffed.

It was a warm scent, a heavy odor he could not identify and yet one he
associated with a living creature. Flat to earth, he pushed head and
shoulders under the low limbs of the bush to look ahead.

Here was a space where the fog did not hold, a pocket of earth clear
under the morning sun. And grazing there were three animals. Again shock
cleared a portion of Travis' bemused brain.

They were about the size, he thought, of antelopes, and they had a
general resemblance to those beasts in that they had four slender legs,
a rounded body, and a head. But they had alien features, so alien as to
hold him in open-mouthed amazement.

The bodies had bare spots here and there, and patches of creamy--fur? Or
was it hair which hung in strips, as if the creatures had been partially
plucked in a careless fashion? The necks were long and moved about in a
serpentine motion, as though their spines were as limber as reptiles'.
On the end of those long and twisting necks were heads which also
appeared more suitable to another species--broad, rather flat, with a
singular toadlike look--but furnished with horns set halfway down the
nose, horns which began in a single root and then branched into two
sharp points.

They were unearthly! Again Travis blinked, brought his hand up to his
head as he continued to view the browsers. There were three of them: two
larger and with horns, the other a smaller beast with less of the ragged
fur and only the beginning button of a protuberance on the nose; it was
probably a calf.

One of those mental alerts from the coyotes broke his absorption.
Nalik'ideyu was not interested in the odd appearance of the grazing
creatures; she was intent upon their usefulness in another way--as a
full and satisfying meal--and she was again impatient with him for his
dull response.

His examination took a more practical turn. An antelope's defense was
speed, though it could be tricked into hunting range through its
inordinate curiosity. The slender legs of these beasts suggested a like
degree of speed, and Travis had no weapons at all.

Those nose horns had an ugly look; this thing might be a fighter rather
than a runner. But the suggestion which had flashed from coyote to him
had taken root. Travis was hungry, he was a hunter, and here was meat on
the hoof, queer as it looked.

Again he received a message. Naginlta was on the opposite side of the
clearing. If the creatures depended on speed, then Travis believed they
could probably outrun not only him but the coyotes as well--which left
cunning and some sort of plan.

Travis glanced at the cover where he knew Nalik'ideyu crouched and from
which had come that flash of agreement. He shivered. These were truly no
animals, but _ga-n_, _ga-n_ of power! And as _ga-n_ he must treat them,
accede to their will. Spurred by that, the Apache gave only flicks of
attention to the browsers while at the same time he studied the part of
the landscape uncovered by mist.

Without weapons or speed, they must conceive a trap. Again Travis sensed
that agreement which was _ga-n_ magic, and with it the strong impression
urging him to the right. He was making progress with skill he did not
even recognize and which he had never been conscious of learning.

The bushes and small, droop-limbed trees, their branches not clothed
with leaves from proper twigs but with a reddish bristly growth
protruding directly from their surfaces, made a partial wall for the
pocket-sized meadow. That screen reached a rocky cleft where the mist
curled in a long tongue through a wall twice Travis' height. If the
browsers could be maneuvered into taking the path through that cleft....

Travis searched about him, and his hands closed upon the oldest weapon
of his species, a stone pulled from an earth pocket and balanced neatly
in the palm of his hand. It was a long chance but his best one.

The Apache took the first step on a new and fearsome road. These _ga-n_
had put their thoughts--or their desires--into his mind. Could he so
contact them in return?

With the stone clenched in his fist, his shoulders back against the wall
not too far from the cleft opening, Travis strove to think out, clearly
and simply, this poor plan of his. He did not know that he was reacting
the way scientists deep space away had hoped he might. Nor did Travis
guess that at this point he had already traveled far beyond the
expectations of the men who had bred and trained the two mutant coyotes.
He only believed that this might be the one way he could obey the wishes
of the two spirits he thought far more powerful than any man. So he
pictured in his mind the cleft, the running creatures, and the part the
_ga-n_ could play if they so willed.

Assent--in its way as loud and clear as if shouted. The man fingered the
stone, weighed it. There would probably be just one moment when he could
use it to effect, and he must be ready.

From this point he could no longer see the small meadow where the
grazers were. But Travis knew, as well as if he watched the scene, that
the coyotes were creeping in, belly flat to earth, adding a feline
stealth and patience to their own cunning.

There! Travis' head jerked, the alert had come, the drive was beginning.
He tensed, gripping his stone.

A yapping bark was answered by a sound he could not describe, a noise
which was neither cough nor grunt but a combination of both. Again a
yap-yap....

A toad-head burst through the screen of brush, the double horn on its
nose festooned with a length of grass torn up by the roots. Wide
eyes--milky and seeming to be without pupils--fastened on Travis, but he
could not be sure the thing saw him, for it kept on, picking up speed
as it approached the cleft. Behind it ran the calf, and that guttural
cry was bubbling from its broad flat lips.

The long neck of the adult writhed, the frog-head swung closer to the
ground so that the twin points of the horn were at a slant--aimed now at
Travis. He had been right in his guess at their deadliness, but he had
only a fleeting chance to recognize that fact as the thing bore down,
its whole attitude expressing the firm intention of goring him.

He hurled his stone and then flung his body to one side, stumbling and
rolling into the brush where he fought madly to regain his feet,
expecting at any moment to feel trampling hoofs and thrusting horns.
There was a crash to his right, and the bushes and grass were wildly
shaken.

On his hands and knees the Apache retreated, his head turned to watch
behind him. He saw the flirt of a triangular flap-tail in the mouth of
the cleft. The calf had escaped. And now the threshing in the bushes
stilled.

Was the thing stalking him? He got to his feet, for the first time
hearing clearly the continued yapping, as if a battle was in progress.
Then the second of the adult beasts came into view, backing and turning,
trying to keep lowered head with menacing double horn always pointed to
the coyotes dancing a teasing, worrying circle about it.

One of the coyotes flung up its head, looked upslope, and barked. Then,
as one, both rushed the fighting beast, but for the first time from the
same side, leaving it a clear path to retreat. It made a rush before
which they fled easily, and then it whirled with a speed and grace,
which did not fit its ungainly, ill-proportioned body, and jumped
toward the cleft, the coyotes making no effort to hinder its escape.

Travis came out of cover, approaching the brush which had concealed the
crash of the other animal. The actions of the coyotes had convinced him
that there was no danger now; they would never have allowed the escape
of their prey had the first beast not been in difficulties.

His shot with the stone, the Apache decided as he stood moments later
surveying the twitching crumpled body, must have hit the thing in the
head, stunning it. Then the momentum of its charge had carried it full
force against the rock to kill it. Blind luck--or the power of the
_ga-n_? He pulled back as the coyotes came padding up shoulder to
shoulder to inspect the kill. It was truly more theirs than his.

Their prey yielded not only food but a weapon for Travis. Instead of the
belt knife he had remembered having, he was now equipped with two. The
double horn had been easy to free from the shattered skull, and some
careful work with stones had broken off one prong at just the angle he
wanted. So now he had a short and a longer tool, defense. At least they
were better than the stone with which he had entered the hunt.

Nalik'ideyu pushed past him to lap daintily at the water. Then she sat
up on her haunches, watching Travis as he smoothed the horn with a
stone.

"A knife," he said to her, "this will be a knife. And--" he glanced up,
measuring the value of the wood represented by trees and bushes--"then a
bow. With a bow we shall hunt better."

The coyote yawned, her yellow eyes half closed, her whole pose one of
satisfaction and contentment.

"A knife," Travis repeated, "and a bow." He needed weapons; he had to
have them!

Why? His hand stopped scraping. Why? The toad-faced double horn had been
quick to attack, but Travis could have avoided it, and it had not hunted
him first. Why was he ridden by this fear that he must not be unarmed?

He dipped his hand into the pool of the spring and lifted the water to
cool his sweating face. The coyote moved, turned around in the grass,
crushing down the growth into a nest in which she curled up, head on
paws. But Travis sat back on his heels, his now idle hands hanging down
between his knees, and forced himself to the task of sorting out jumbled
memories.

This landscape was wrong--totally unlike what it should be--but it was
real. He had helped kill this alien creature. He had eaten its meat,
raw. Its horn lay within touch now. All that was real and unchangeable.
Which meant that the rest of it, that other desert world in which he had
wandered with his kind, ridden horses, raided invading men of another
race, that was not real--or else far, far removed from where he now sat.

Yet there had been no dividing line between those two worlds. One moment
he had been in the desert place, returning from a successful foray
against the Mexicans. Mexicans! Travis caught at that identification,
tried to use it as a thread to draw closer to the beginning of his
mystery.

Mexicans.... And he was an Apache, one of the Eagle people, one who rode
with Cochise. No!

Sweat again beaded his face where the water had cooled it. He was not of
that past. He was Travis Fox, of the very late twentieth century, not a
nomad of the middle nineteenth! He was of Team A of the project!

The Arizona desert and then this! From one to the other in an instant.
He looked about him in rising fear. Wait! He had been in the dark when
he got out of the desert, lying in a box. Getting out, he had crawled
down a passage to reach moonlight, strange moonlight.

A box in which he had lain, a passage with smooth metallic walls, and an
alien world at the end of it.

The coyote's ears twitched, her head came up, she was staring at the
man's drawn face, at his eyes with their core of fear. She whined.

Travis caught up the two pieces of horn, thrust them into his sash belt,
and got to his feet. Nalik'ideyu sat up, her head cocked a little to one
side. As the man turned to seek his own back trail she padded along in
his wake and whined for Naginlta. But Travis was more intent now on what
he must prove to himself than he was on the actions of the two animals.

It was a wandering trail, and now he did not question his skill in being
able to follow it so unerringly. The sun was hot. Winged things buzzed
from the bushes, small scuttling things fled from him through the tall
grass. Once Naginlta growled a warning which led them all to a detour,
and Travis might not have picked up the proper trace again had not the
coyote scout led him to it.

"Who are you?" he asked once, and then guessed it would have better been
said, "What are you?" These were not animals, or rather they were more
than the animals he had always known. And one part of him, the part
which remembered the desert rancherias where Cochise had ruled, said
they were spirits. Yet that other part of him.... Travis shook his
head, accepting them now for what they were--welcome company in an alien
place.

The day wore on close to sunset, and still Travis followed that
wandering trail. The need which drove him kept him going through the
rough country of hills and ravines. Now the mist lifted above towering
walls of mountains very near him, yet not the mountains of his memory.
These were dull brown, with a forbidding look, like sun-dried skulls
baring teeth in warning against all comers.

With great difficulty, Travis topped a rise. Ahead against the skyline
stood both coyotes. And, as the man joined them, first one and then the
other flung back its head and sounded the sobbing, shattering cry which
had been a part of that other life.

The Apache looked down. His puzzle was answered in part. The wreckage
crumpled on the mountain side was identifiable--a spaceship! Cold fear
gripped him and his own head went back; from between his tight lips came
a cry as desolate and despairing as the one the animals had voiced.


4


Fire, mankind's oldest ally, weapon, tool, leaped high before the naked
stone of the mountain side. Men sat cross-legged about it, fifteen of
them. And behind, guarded by the flames and that somber circle, were the
women. There was a uniformity in this gathering. The members were
plainly all of the same racial stock, of medium height, stocky yet fined
down to the peak of stamina and endurance, their skin brown, their
shoulder-length hair black. And they were all young--none over thirty,
some still in their late teens. Alike, too, was a certain drawn look in
their faces, a tenseness of the eyes and mouth as they listened to
Travis.

"So we must be on Topaz. Do any of you remember boarding the ship?"

"No. Only that we awoke within it." Across the fire one chin lifted; the
eyes which caught Travis' held a deep, smoldering anger. "This is more
trickery of the Pinda-lick-o-yi, the White Eyes. Between us there has
never been fair dealing. They have broken their promise as a man breaks
a rotten stick, for their words are as rotten. And it was you, Fox, who
brought us to listen to them."

A stir about the circle, a murmur from the women.

"And do I not also sit here with you in this strange wilderness?" he
countered.

"I do not understand," another of the men held out his hand, palm up, in
a gesture of asking--"what has happened to us. We were in the old Apache
world.... I, Jil-Lee, was riding with Cuchillo Negro as we went down to
the taking of Ramos. And then I was here, in a broken ship and beside me
a dead man who was once my brother. How did I come out of the past of
our people into another world across the stars?"

"Pinda-lick-o-yi tricks!" The first speaker spat into the fire.

"It was the Redax, I think," Travis replied. "I heard Dr. Ashe discuss
this. A new machine which could make a man remember not his own past,
but the past of his ancestors. While we were on that ship we must have
been under its influence, so we lived as our people lived a hundred
years or more ago--"

"And the purpose of such a thing?" Jil-Lee asked.

"To make us more like our ancestors perhaps. It is part of what they
told us at the project. To venture into these new worlds requires a
different type of man than lives on Terra today. Traits we have
forgotten are needed to face the dangers of wild places."

"You, Fox, have been beyond the stars before, and you found there were
such dangers to face?"

"It is true. You have heard of the three worlds I saw when the ship from
the old days took us off, unwilling, to the stars. Did you not all
volunteer to pioneer in this manner so you could also see strange and
new things?"

"But we did not agree to be returned to the past in medicine dreams and
be sent unknowingly into space!"

Travis nodded. "Deklay is right. But I know no more than you why we were
so sent, or why the ship crashed. We have found Dr. Ruthven's body in
the cabin with that new installation. Only we have discovered nothing
else which tells us why we were brought here. With the ship broken, we
must stay."

They were silent now, men and women alike. Behind them lay several days
of activity, nights of exhausted slumber. Against the cliff wall lay the
packs of supplies they had salvaged from the wreck. By mutual consent
they had left the vicinity of the broken globe, following their old
custom of speedily withdrawing from a place of death.

"This is a world empty of men?" Jil-Lee wanted to know.

"So far we have found only animal signs, and the _ga-n_ have not warned
us of anything else----"

"Those devil ones!" Again Deklay spat into the fire. "I say we should
have no dealings with them. The _mba'a_ is no friend to the People."

Again a murmur which seemed one of agreement answered that outburst.
Travis stiffened. Just how much influence had the Redax had over them?
He knew from his own experience that sometimes he had an odd double
reaction--two different feelings which almost sickened him when they
struck simultaneously. And he was beginning to suspect that with some of
the others the return to the past had been far more deep and lasting.
Now Jil-Lee was actually to reason out what had happened. While Deklay
had reverted to an ancestor who had ridden with Victorio or Magnus
Colorado! Travis had a flash of premonition, a chill which made him
half foresee a time when the past and the present might well split them
apart--fatally.

"Devil or _ga-n_." A man with a quiet face, rather deeply sunken eyes,
spoke for the first time. "We are in two minds because of this Redax, so
let us not do anything in haste. Back in the desert world of the People
I have seen the _mba'a_, and he was very clever. With the badger he went
hunting, and when the badger had dug up the rat's nest, so did the
_mba'a_ wait on the other side of the thorny bush and catch those who
would escape that way. Between him and the badger there was no war.
These two who sit over yonder now--they are also hunters and they seem
friendly to us. In a strange place a man needs all the help he can find.
Let us not call names out of old tales, which may mean nothing in fact."

"Buck speaks straightly," Jil-Lee agreed. "We seek a camp which can be
defended. For perhaps there are men here whose hunting territory we have
invaded, though we have not yet seen them. We are a people small in
number and alone. Let us walk softly on trails which are strange to our
feet."

Inwardly Travis sighed in relief. Buck, Jil-Lee ... for the moment their
sensible words appeared to swing the opinions of the party. If either of
them could be established as _haldzil_, or clan leader, they would all
be safer. He himself had no aspirations in that direction and dared not
push too hard. It had been his initial urging which had brought them as
volunteers into the project. Now he was doubly suspect, and especially
by those who thought as Deklay, he was considered too alien to their old
ways.

So far their protests had been fewer than he anticipated. Although
brothers and sisters had followed each other into the team after the
immemorial desire of Apaches to cling to family ties, they were not a
true clan with solidity of that to back them, but representatives of
half a dozen.

Basically, back on Terra, they had all been among the most progressive
of their people--progressive, that is, in the white man's sense of the
word. Travis had a fleeting recognition of his now oblique way of
thinking. He, too, had been marked by the Redax. They had all been
educated in the modern fashion and all possessed a spirit of adventure
which marked them over their fellows. They had volunteered for the team
and successfully passed the tests to weed out the temperamentally unfit
or fainthearted. But all that was before Redax....

Why had they been submitted to that? And why this flight? What had
pushed Dr. Ashe and Murdock and Colonel Kelgarries, time agents he knew
and trusted, into dispatching them without warning to Topaz? Something
had happened, something which had given Dr. Ruthven ascendancy over
those others and had started them on this wild trip.

Travis was conscious of a stir about the firelit circle. The men were
rising, moving back into the shadows, stretching out on the blankets
they had found among other stores on the ship. They had discovered
weapons there--knives, bows, quivers of arrows, all of which they had
been trained to use in the intensive schooling of the project and which
needed no more repair than they themselves could give. And the rations
they carried were field supplies, few of them. Tomorrow they must begin
hunting in earnest....

"Why has this thing been done to us?" Buck was beside Travis, those
quiet eyes sliding past him to seek the fire once more. "I do not think
you were told when the rest of us were not----"

Travis seized upon that. "There are those who say that I knew, agreed?"

"That is so. Once we stood at the same place in time--in our thoughts,
our desires. Now we stand at many places, as if we climbed a stairway,
each at his own speed--a stairway the Pinda-lick-o-yi has set us upon.
Some here, some there, some yet farther above...." He sketched a series
of step outlines in the air. "And in this there is trouble--"

"The truth," Travis agreed. "Yet it is also true that I knew nothing of
this, that I climb with you on these stairs."

"So I believe. But there comes a time when it is best not to be a woman
stirring a pot of boiling stew but rather one who stands quietly at a
distance--"

"You mean?" Travis pressed.

"I say that alone among us you have crossed the stars before, therefore
new things are not so hard to understand. And we need a scout. Also the
coyotes run in your footsteps, and you do not fear them."

It made good sense. Let him scout ahead of the party, taking the coyotes
with him. Stay away from the camp for a while and speak small--until the
people on Buck's stairway were more closely united.

"I go in the morning," Travis agreed. He could slip away tonight, but
just now he could not force himself away from the fire, from the
companionship.

"You might take Tsoay with you," Buck continued.

Travis waited for him to enlarge on that suggestion. Tsoay was one of
the youngest of their group, Buck's own cross-cousin and near-brother.

"It is well," Buck explained, "that we learn this land, and it has
always been our custom that the younger walk in the footprints of the
older. Also, not only should trails be learned, but also men."

Travis caught the thought behind that. Perhaps by taking the younger men
as scouts, one after another, he could build up among them a following
of sorts. Among the Apaches, leadership was wholly a matter of
personality. Until the reservation days, chieftains had gained their
position by force of character alone, though they might come
successively from one family clan over several generations.

He did not want the chieftainship here. No, but neither did he want
growing whispers working about him to cut him off from his people. To
every Apache severance from the clan was a little death. He must have
those who would back him if Deklay, or those who thought like Deklay,
turned grumbling into open hostility.

"Tsoay is one quick to learn," Travis agreed. "We go at dawn--"

"Along the mountain range?" Buck inquired.

"If we seek a protected place for the rancheria, yes. The mountains have
always provided good strongholds for the People."

"And you think there is need for a fort?"

Travis shrugged. "I have been one day's journey out into this world. I
saw nothing but animals. But that is no promise that elsewhere there are
no enemies. The planet was on the tapes we brought back from that other
world, and so it was known to the others who once rode between star and
star as we rode between ranch and town. If they had this world set on a
journey tape, it was for a reason; that reason may still be in force."

"Yet it was long ago that these star people rode so...." Buck mused.
"Would the reason last so long?"

Travis remembered two other worlds, one of weird desert inhabited by
beast things--or had they once been human, human to the point of
possessing intelligence?--that had come out of sand burrows at night to
attack a spaceship. And the second world where the ruins of a giant city
had stood choked with jungle vegetation, where he had made a blowgun
from tubes of rustless metal as a weapon gift for small winged men--but
were they men? Both had been remnants of that ancient galactic empire.

"Some things could so remain," he answered soberly. "If we find them, we
must be careful. But first a good site for the rancheria."

"There is no return to home for us," Buck stated flatly.

"Why do you say that? There could be a rescue ship later--"

The other raised his eyes again to Travis. "When you slept under the
Redax how did you ride?"

"As a warrior--raiding ... living...."

"And I--I was one with _go'ndi_," Buck returned simply.

"But--"

"But the white man has assured us that such power--the power of a
chief--does not exist? Yes, the Pinda-lick-o-yi has told us so many
things. He is busy, busy with his tools, his machines, always busy. And
those who think in another fashion cannot be measured by his rules, so
they are foolish dreamers. Not all white men think so. There was Dr.
Ashe--he was beginning to understand a little.

"Perhaps I, too, am standing still, halfway up the stairway of the past.
But of this I am very sure: For us, there will be no return to our own
place. And the time will come when something new shall grow from the
seed of the past. Also it is necessary that you be one of the tenders of
that growth. So I urge you, take Tsoay, and the next time, Lupe. For the
young who may be swayed this way and that by words--as the wind shakes a
small tree--must be given firm roots."

In Travis education warred with instinct, just as the picture Redax had
planted in his mind had warred with his awaking to this alien landscape.
Yet now he believed he must be guided by what he felt. And he knew that
no man of his race would claim _go'ndi_, the power of spirit known only
to a great chief, unless he had actually felt it swell within him. It
might have been fostered by hallucination in the past, but the aura of
it carried into the here and now. And Travis had no doubts that Buck
believed implicitly in what he said, and that belief carried credulity
to others.

"This is wisdom, _Nantan_--"

Buck shook his head. "I am no _nantan_, no chief. But of some things I
am sure. You also be sure of what lies within you, younger brother!"

On the third day, ranging eastward along the base of the mountain range,
Travis found what he believed would be an acceptable camp site. There
was a canyon with a good spring of water cut round by well-marked game
trails. A series of ledges brought him up to a small plateau where scrub
wood could be used to build the wickiups. Water and food lay within
reach, and the ledge approach was easy to defend. Even Deklay and his
fellow malcontents were forced to concede the value of the site.

His duty to the clan accomplished, Travis returned to his own concern,
one which had haunted him for days. Topaz had been taped by men of the
vanished star empire. Therefore, the planet was important, but why? As
yet he had found no indication that anything above the intelligence
level of the split horns was native to this world. But he was gnawed by
the certainty that there _was_ something here, waiting.... And the
desire to learn what it was became an ever-burning ache.

Perhaps he was what Deklay had accused him of being, one who had come to
follow the road of the Pinda-lick-o-yi too closely. For Travis was
content to scout with only the coyotes for company, and he did not find
the loneliness of the unknown planet as intimidating as most of the
others.

He was checking his small trail pack on the fourth day after they had
settled on the plateau when Buck and Jil-Lee hunkered down beside him.

"You go to hunt--?" Buck broke the silence first.

"Not for meat."

"What do you fear? That _ndendai_--enemy people--have marked this as
their land?" Jil-Lee questioned.

"That may be true, but now I hunt for what this world was at one time,
the reason why the ancient star men marked it as their own."

"And this knowledge may be of value to us?" Jil-Lee asked slowly. "Will
it bring food to our mouths, shelter for our bodies--mean life for us?"

"All that is possible. It is the unknowing which is bad."

"True. Unknowing is always bad," Buck agreed. "But the bow which is
fitted to one hand and strength of arm, may not be suited to another.
Remember that, younger brother. Also, do you go alone?"

"With Naginlta and Nalik'ideyu I am not alone."

"Take Tsoay with you also. The four-footed ones are indeed _ga-n_ for
the service of those they like, but it is not good that man walks alone
from his kind."

There it was again, the feeling of clan solidarity which Travis did not
always share. On the other hand, Tsoay would not be a hindrance. On
other scouts the boy had proved to have a keen eye for the country and a
liking for experimentation which was not a universal attribute even
among those of his own age.

"I would go to find a path through the mountains; it may be a long
trail," Travis half protested.

"You believe what you seek may lie to the north?"

Travis shrugged. "I do not know. How can I? But it will be another way
of seeking."

"Tsoay shall go. He keeps silent before older warriors as is proper for
the untried, but his thoughts fly free as do yours," Buck replied. "It
is in him also, this need to see new places."

"There is this," Jil-Lee got to his feet, "--do not go so far, brother,
that you may not easily find a way to return. This is a wide land, and
within it we are but a handful of men alone----"

"That, too, I know." Travis thought he could read more than one kind of
warning in Jil-Lee's words.

       *       *       *       *       *

They were the second day away from the plateau camp, and climbing, when
they chanced upon the pass Travis had hoped might exist. Before them lay
an abrupt descent to what appeared to be open plains country cloaked in
a dusky amber Travis now knew was the thick grass found in the southern
valleys. Tsoay pointed with his chin.

"Wide land--good for horses, cattle, ranches...."

But all those lay far beyond the black space surrounding them. Travis
wondered if there was any native animal which could serve man in place
of the horse.

"Do we go down?" Tsoay asked.

From this point Travis could sight no break far out on the amber plain,
no sign of any building or any disturbance of its smooth emptiness. Yet
it drew him. "We go," he decided.

Close as it had looked from the pass, the plain was yet a day and a
night, spent in careful watching by turns, ahead of them. It was
midmorning of the second day that they left the foothill breaks, and the
grass of the open country was waist high about them. Travis could see it
rippling where the coyotes threaded ahead. Then he was conscious of a
persistent buzzing, a noise which irritated faintly until he was
compelled to trace it to its source.

The grass had been trampled flat for an irregular patch, with a trail
of broken stalks out of the heart of the plain. At one side was a
buzzing, seething mass of glitter-winged insects which Travis already
knew as carrion eaters. They arose reluctantly from their feast as he
approached.

He drew a short breath which was close to a grunt of astounded
recognition. What lay there was so impossible that he could not believe
the evidence of his eyes. Tsoay gave a sharp exclamation, went down on
one knee for a closer examination, then looked at Travis over his
shoulder, his eyes wide, more than a trace of excitement in his voice.

"Horse dung--and fresh!"


5


"There was one horse, unshod but ridden. It came here from the plains
and it had been ridden hard, going lame. There was a rest here, maybe
shortly after dawn." Travis sorted out what they had learned by a
careful examination of the ground.

Nalik'ideyu and Naginlta, Tsoay, watched and listened as if the coyotes
as well as the boy could understand every word.

"There is that also--" Tsoay indicated the one trace left by the unknown
rider, an impression blurred as if some attempt had been made to conceal
it.

"Small and light, the rider is both. Also in fear, I think--"

"We follow?" Tsoay asked.

"We follow," Travis assented. He looked to the coyotes, and as he had
learned to do, thought out his message. This trail was the one to be
followed. When the rider was sighted they were to report back if the
Apaches had not yet caught up.

There was no visible agreement; the coyotes simply vanished through the
wall of grass.

"Then there are others here," Tsoay said as he and Travis began their
return to the foothills. "Perhaps there was a second ship--"

"That horse," Travis said, shaking his head. "There was no provision in
the project for the shipping of horses."

"Perhaps they have always been here."

"Not so. To each world its own species of beasts. But we shall know the
truth when we look upon that horse--and its rider."

It was warmer this side of the mountains, and the heat of the plains
beat at them. Travis thought that the horse might well be seeking water
if allowed his head. Where did he come from? And why had his rider gone
in haste and fear?

This was rough, broken country and the tired, limping horse seemed to
have picked the easiest way through it, without any hindrance from the
man with him. Travis spotted a soft patch of ground with a deep-set
impression. This time there had been no attempt at erasure; the boot
track was plain. The rider had dismounted and was leading the horse--yet
he was moving swiftly.

They followed the tracks around the bend of a shallow cut and found
Nalik'ideyu waiting for them. Between her forefeet was a bundle still
covered with smears of soft earth, and behind her were drag marks from a
hole under the overhang of a bush. The coyote had plainly just
disinterred her find. Travis squatted down to examine it, using his eyes
before his hands.

It was a bag made of hide, probably the hide of one of the split horns
by its color and the scraps of long hair which had been left in a
simple decorative fringe along the bottom. The sides had been laced
together neatly by someone used to working in leather, the closing flap
lashed down tightly with braided thong loops.

As the Apache leaned closer to it he could smell a mixture of odors--the
hide itself, horse, wood smoke, and other scents--strange to him. He
undid the fastenings and pulled out the contents.

There was a shirt, with long full sleeves, of a gray wool undyed from
the sheep. Then a very bulky short jacket which, after fingering it
doubtfully, Travis decided was made of felt. It was elaborately
decorated with highly colorful embroidery, and there was no mistaking
the design--a heavy antlered Terran deer in mortal combat with what
might be a puma. It was bordered with a geometric pattern of beautiful,
oddly familiar work. Travis smoothed it flat over his knee and tried to
remember where he had seen its like before ... a book! An illustration
in a book! But which book, when? Not recently, and it was not a pattern
known to his own people.

Twisted into the interior of the jacket was a silklike scarf, clear,
light blue--the blue of Terra's cloudless skies on certain days, so
different from the yellow shield now hanging above them. A small case of
leather, with silhouetted designs cut from hide and affixed to it,
designs as intricate and complex as the embroidery on the jacket--art of
a high standard. In the case a knife and spoon, the bowl and blade of
dull metal, the handles of horn carved with horse heads, the tiny
wide-open eyes set with glittering stones.

Personal possessions dear to the owner, so that when they must be
abandoned for flight they were hidden with some hope of recovery. Travis
slowly repacked them, trying to fold the garments into their original
creases. He was still puzzled by those designs.

"Who?" Tsoay touched the edge of the jacket with one finger, his
admiration for it plain to read.

"I don't know. But it is of our own world."

"That is a deer, though the horns are wrong," Tsoay agreed. "And the
puma is very well done. The one who made this knows animals well."

Travis pushed the jacket back into the bag and laced it shut. But he did
not return it to the hiding place. Instead, he made it a part of his own
pack. If they did not succeed in running down the fugitive, he wanted an
opportunity for closer study, a chance to remember just where he had
seen that picture before.

The narrow valley where they had discovered the bag sloped upward, and
there were signs that their quarry found the ground harder to cover. The
second discard lay in open sight--again a leather bag which Nalik'ideyu
sniffed and then began to lick eagerly, thrusting her nose into its
flaccid interior.

Travis picked it up, finding it damp to the touch. It had an odd smell,
like that of sour milk. He ran a finger around inside, brought it out
wet; yet this was neither water bag nor canteen. And he was completely
mystified when he turned it inside out, for though the inner surface was
wet, the bag was empty. He offered it to the coyote, and she took it
promptly.

Holding it firmly to the earth with her forepaws, she licked the
surface, though Travis could see no deposit which might attract her. It
was clear that the bag had once held some sort of food.

"Here they rested," Tsoay said. "Not too far ahead now--"

But now they were in the kind of country where a man could hide in order
to check on his back trail. Travis studied the terrain and then made his
own plans. They would leave the plainly marked trace of the fugitive,
strike out upslope to the east and try to parallel the other's route. In
that maze of rock outcrops and wood copses there was tricky going.

Nalik'ideyu gave a last lick to the bag as Travis signaled her. She
regarded him, then turned her head to survey the country before them. At
last she trotted on, her buff coat melting into the vegetation. With
Naginlta she would scout the quarry and keep watch, leaving the men to
take the longer way around.

Travis pulled off his shirt, folding it into a packet and tucking it
beneath the folds of his sash-belt, just as his ancestors had always
done before a fight. Then he cached his pack and Tsoay's. As they began
the stiff climb they carried only their bows, the quivers slung on their
shoulders, and the long-bladed knives. But they flitted like shadows
and, like the coyotes, their red-brown bodies became indistinguishable
against the bronze of the land.

They should be, Travis judged, not more than an hour away from sundown.
And they had to locate the stranger before the dark closed in. His
respect for their quarry had grown. The unknown might have been driven
by fear, but he held to a good pace and headed intelligently for just
the kind of country which would serve him best. If Travis could only
remember where he had seen the like of that embroidery! It had a
meaning which might be important now....

Tsoay slipped behind a wind-gnarled tree and disappeared. Travis stooped
under a line of bush limbs. Both were working their way south, using the
peak ahead as an agreed landmark, pausing at intervals to examine the
landscape for any hint of a man and horse.

Travis squirmed snake fashion into an opening between two rock pillars
and lay there, the westering sun hot on his bare shoulders and back, his
chin propped on his forearm. In the band holding back his hair he had
inserted some concealing tufts of wiry mountain grass, the ends of which
drooped over his rugged features.

Only seconds earlier he had caught that fragmentary warning from one of
the coyotes. What they sought was very close, it was right down there.
Both animals were in ambush, awaiting orders. And what they found was
familiar, another confirmation that the fugitive was Terran, not native
to Topaz.

With searching eyes, Travis examined the site indicated by the coyotes.
His respect for the stranger was raised another notch. In time either he
or Tsoay might have sighted that hideaway without the aid of the animal
scouts; on the other hand, they might have failed. For the fugitive had
truly gone to earth, using some pocket or crevice in the mountain wall.

There was no sign of the horse, but a branch here and there had been
pulled out of place, the scars of their removal readable when one knew
where to look. Odd, Travis began to puzzle over what he saw. It was
almost as if whatever pursuit the stranger feared would come not at
ground level but from above; the precautions the stranger had taken were
to veil his retreat to the reaches of the mountain side.

Had he expected any trailer to make a flanking move from up that slope
where the Apaches now lay? Travis' teeth nipped the weathered skin of
his forearm. Could it be that at some time during the day's journeying
the fugitive had doubled back, having seen his trackers? But there had
been no traces of any such scouting, and the coyotes would surely have
warned them. Human eyes and ears could be tricked, but Travis trusted
the senses of Naginlta and Nalik'ideyu far above his own.

No, he did not believe that the rider expected the Apaches. But the man
did expect someone or something which would come upon him from the
heights. The heights.... Travis rolled his head slightly to look at the
upper reaches of the hills about him--with suspicion.

In their own journey across the mountains and through the pass they had
found nothing threatening. Dangerous animals might roam there. There had
been some paw marks, one such trail the coyotes had warned against. But
the type of precautions the stranger had taken were against intelligent,
thinking beings, not against animals more likely to track by scent than
by sight.

And if the stranger expected an attack from above, then Travis and Tsoay
must be alert. Travis analyzed each feature of the hillside, setting in
his mind a picture of every inch of ground they must cross. Just as he
had wanted daylight as an ally before, so now was he willing to wait for
the shadows of twilight.

He closed his eyes in a final check, able to recall the details of the
hiding place, knowing that he could reach it when the conditions
favored, without mistake. Then he edged back from his vantage point, and
raising his fingers to his lips, made a small angry chittering, three
times repeated. One of the species inhabiting these heights, as they had
noted earlier, was a creature about as big as the palm of a man's hand,
resembling nothing so much as a round ball of ruffled feathers, though
its covering might actually have been a silky, fluffy fur. Its short
legs could cover ground at an amazing speed, and it had the bold
impudence of a creature with few natural enemies. This was its usual
cry.

Tsoay's hand waved Travis on to where the younger man had taken position
behind the bleached trunk of a fallen tree.

"He hides," Tsoay whispered.

"Against trouble from above." Travis added his own observation.

"But not us, I think."

So Tsoay had come to that conclusion too? Travis tried to gauge the
nearness of twilight. There was a period after the passing of Topaz' sun
when the dusky light played odd tricks with shadows. That would be the
first time for their move. He said as much, and Tsoay nodded eagerly.
They sat with their backs to a boulder, the tree trunk serving as a
screen, and chewed methodically on ration tablets. There was energy and
sustenance in the tasteless squares which would support men, even though
their stomachs continued to demand the satisfaction of fresh meat.

Taking turns, they dozed a little. But the last banners of Topaz' sun
were still in the sky when Travis judged the shadows cover enough. He
had no way of knowing how the stranger was armed. Though he used a horse
for transportation, he might well carry a rifle and the most modern
Terran sidearms.

The Apaches' bows were little use for infighting, but they had their
knives. However, Travis wanted to take the fugitive unharmed if he
could. There was information he must have. So he did not even draw his
knife as he started downhill.

When he reached a pool of violet dusk at the bottom of the small ravine
Naginlta's eyes regarded him knowingly. Travis signaled with his hand
and thought out what would be the coyotes' part in this surprise attack.
The prick-eared silhouette vanished. Uphill the chitter of a fluff-fur
sounded twice--Tsoay was in position.

A howl ... wailing ... sobbing ... was heard, one of the keening songs
of the _mba'a_. Travis darted forward. He heard the nicker of a
frightened horse, a clicking which could have marked the pawing of hoof
on gravel, saw the brush hiding the stranger's hole tremble, a portion
of it fall away.

Travis sped on, his moccasins making no sound on the ground. One of the
coyotes gave tongue for the second time, the eerie wailing rising to a
yapping which echoed from the rocks about them. Travis poised for a
dive.

Another section of those artfully heaped branches had given way and a
horse reared, its upflung head plainly marked against the sky. A blurred
figure weaved back and forth before it, trying to control the mount. The
stranger had his hands full, certainly no weapon drawn--this was it!

Travis leaped. His hands found their mark, the shoulders of the
stranger. There was a shrill cry from the other as he tried to turn in
the Apache's hold, to face his attacker. But Travis bore them both on,
rolling almost under the feet of the horse, sliding downhill, the
unknown's writhing body pinned down by the Apache's weight and his
clasp, tight as an iron grip, about the other's chest and upper arms.

He felt his opponent go limp, but was suspicious enough not to release
that hold, for the heavy breathing of the stranger was not that of an
unconscious man. They lay so, the unknown still tight in Travis' hold
but no longer fighting. The Apache could hear Tsoay soothing the horse
with the purring words of a practiced horseman.

Still the stranger did not resume the struggle. They could not lie in
this position all night, Travis thought with a wry twist of amusement.
He shifted his hold, and got the lightning-quick response he had
expected. But it was not quite quick enough, for Travis had the other's
hands behind his back, cupping slender, almost delicate wrists together.

"Throw me a cord!" he called to Tsoay.

The younger man ran up with an extra bow cord, and in a moment they had
bonds on the struggling captive. Travis rolled their catch over,
reaching down for a fistful of hair to pull the head into a patch of
clearer light.

In his grasp that hair came loose, a braid unwinding. He grunted as he
looked down into the stranger's face. Dust marks were streaked now with
tear runnels, but the gray eyes which turned fiercely on him said that
their owner cried more in rage than fear.

His captive might be wearing long trousers tucked into curved, toed
boots, and a loose overblouse, but she was certainly not only a woman,
but a very young and attractive one. Also, at the present moment, an
exceedingly angry one. And behind that anger was fear, the fear of one
fighting hopelessly against insurmountable odds. But as she eyed Travis
now her expression changed.

He felt she had expected another captor altogether and was astounded at
the sight of him. Her tongue touched her lips, moistening them, and now
the fear in her was another kind--the wary fear of one facing a totally
new and perhaps dangerous thing.

"Who are you?" Travis spoke in English, for he had no doubts that she
was Terran.

Now she sucked in her breath with a gasp of pure astonishment.

"Who are _you_?" she parroted his question in a marked accent. English
was not her native tongue, he was sure.

Travis reached out, and again his hands closed on her shoulders. She
started to twist and then realized he was merely pulling her up to a
sitting position. Some of the fear had left her eyes, an intent interest
taking its place.

"You are not Sons of the Blue Wolf," she stated in her heavily accented
speech.

Travis smiled. "I am the Fox, not the Wolf," he returned. "And the
Coyote is my brother." He snapped his fingers at the shadows, and the
two animals came noiselessly into sight. Her gaze widened even more at
Naginlta and Nalik'ideyu, and she deduced the bond which must exist
between her captor and the beasts.

"This woman is also of our world." Tsoay spoke in Apache, looking over
their prisoner with frank interest. "Only she is not of the People."

Sons of the Blue Wolf? Travis thought again of the embroidery designs on
the jacket. Who had called themselves by that picturesque
title--where--and when in time?

"What do you fear, Daughter of the Blue Wolf?" he asked.

And with that question he seemed to touch some button activating terror.
She flung back her head so that she could see the darkening sky.

"The flyer!" Her voice was muted as if more than a whisper would carry
to the stars just coming into brilliance above them. "They will come ...
tracking. I did not reach the inner mountains in time."

There was a despairing note in that which cut through to Travis, who
found that he, too, was searching the sky, not knowing what he looked
for or what kind of menace it promised, only that it was real danger.


6


"The night comes," Tsoay spoke slowly in English. "Do these you fear
hunt in the dark?"

She shook her head to free her forehead from a coil of braid, pulled
loose in her struggle with Travis.

"They do not need eyes or such noses as those four-footed hunters of
yours. They have a machine to track--"

"Then what purpose is this brush pile of yours?" Travis raised his chin
at the disturbed hiding place.

"They do not constantly use the machine, and one can hope. But at night
they can ride on its beam. We are not far enough into the hills to lose
them. Bahatur went lame, and so I was slowed...."

"And what lies in these mountains that those you fear dare not invade
them?" Travis continued.

"I do not know, save if one can climb far enough inside, one is safe
from pursuit."

"I ask it again: Who are you?" The Apache leaned forward, his face in
the fast-fading light now only inches away from hers. She did not shrink
from his close scrutiny but met him eye to eye. This was a woman of
proud independence, truly a chief's daughter, Travis decided.

"I am of the People of the Blue Wolf. We were brought across the star
lanes to make this world safe for ... for ... the...." She hesitated,
and now there was a shade of puzzlement on her face. "There is a
reason--a dream. No, there is the dream and there is reality. I am
Kaydessa of the Golden Horde, but sometimes I remember other
things--like this speech of strange words I am mouthing now----"

"The Golden Horde!" Travis knew now. The embroidery, Sons of the Blue
Wolf, all fitted into a special pattern. But what a pattern! Scythian
art, the ornament that the warriors of Genghis Khan bore so proudly.
Tatars, Mongols--the barbarians who had swept from the fastness of the
steppes to change the course of history, not only in Asia but across the
plains of middle Europe. The men of the Emperor Khans who had ridden
behind the yak-tailed standards of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan,
Tamerlane--!

"The Golden Horde," Travis repeated once again. "That lies far back in
the history of another world, Wolf Daughter."

She stared at him, a queer, lost expression on her dust-grimed face.

"I know." Her voice was so muted he could hardly distinguish the words.
"My people live in two times, and many do not realize that."

Tsoay had crouched down beside them to listen. Now he put out his hand,
touching Travis' shoulder.

"Redax?"

"Or its like." For Travis was sure of one point. The project, which had
been training three teams for space colonization--one of Eskimos, one of
Pacific Islanders, and one of his own Apaches--had no reason or chance
to select Mongols from the wild past of the raiding Hordes. There was
only one nation on Terra which could have picked such colonists.

"You are Russian." He studied her carefully, intent on noting the effect
of his words.

But she did not lose that lost look. "Russian ... Russian ..." she
repeated, as if the very word was strange.

Travis was alarmed. Any Russian colony planted here could well possess
technicians with machines capable of tracking a fugitive, and if
mountain heights were protection against such a hunt, he intended to
gain them, even by night traveling. He said this to Tsoay, and the other
emphatically agreed.

"The horse is too lame to go on," the younger man reported.

Travis hesitated for a long second. Since the time they had stolen their
first mounts from the encroaching Spanish, horses had always been wealth
to his people. To leave an animal which could well serve the clan was
not right. But they dared not waste time with a lame beast.

"Leave it here, free," he ordered.

"And the woman?"

"She goes with us. We must learn all we can of these people and what
they do here. Listen, Wolf Daughter," again Travis leaned close to make
sure she was listening to him as he spoke with emphasis--"you will
travel with us into these high places, and there will be no trouble from
you." He drew his knife and held the blade warningly before her eyes.

"It was already in my mind to go to the mountains," she told him evenly.
"Untie my hands, brave warrior, you have surely nothing to fear from a
woman."

His hand made a swift sweep and plucked a knife as long and keen as his
from the folds of the sash beneath her loose outer garment.

"Not now, Wolf Daughter, since I have drawn your fangs."

He helped her to her feet and slashed the cord about her wrists with her
knife, which he then fastened to his own belt. Alerting the coyotes, he
dispatched them ahead; and the three started on, the Mongol girl between
the two Apaches. The abandoned horse nickered lonesomely and then began
to graze on tufts of grass, moving slowly to favor his foot.

The two moons rode the sky as the hours advanced, their beams fighting
the shadows. Travis felt reasonably safe from any attack at ground
level, depending upon the coyotes for warning. But he held them all to a
steady pace. And he did not question the girl again until all three of
them hunkered down at a small mountain spring, to dash icy water over
their faces and drink from cupped hands.

"Why do you flee your own people, Wolf Daughter?"

"My name is Kaydessa," she corrected him.

He chuckled with laughter at the prim tone of her voice. "And you see
here Tsoay of the People--the Apaches--while I am Fox." He was giving
her the English equivalent of his tribal name.

"Apaches." She tried to repeat the word with the same accent he had
used. "And what are Apaches?"

"Indians--Amerindians," he explained. "But you have not answered my
question, Kaydessa. Why do you run from your own people?"

"Not from my people," she said, shaking her head determinedly. "From
those others. It is like this--Oh, how can I make you understand
rightly?" She spread her wet hands out before her in the moonlight, the
damp patches on her sleeves clinging to her arms. "There are my people
of the Golden Horde, though once we were different and we can remember
bits of that previous life. Then there are also the men who live in the
sky ship and use the machine so that we think only the thoughts they
would have us think. Now why," she looked at Travis intently--"do I wish
to tell you all this? It is strange. You say you are
Indian--American--are we then enemies? There is a part memory which says
that we are ... were...."

"Let us rather say," he corrected her, "that the Apaches and the Horde
are not enemies here and now, no matter what was before." That was the
truth, Travis recognized. By all accounts his people had come out of
Asia in the very dim beginnings of migrating peoples. For all her
dark-red hair and gray eyes, this girl who had been arbitrarily returned
to a past just as they had been by Redax, could well be a distant
clan-cousin.

"You--" Kaydessa's fingers rested for a moment on his wrist--"you, too,
were sent here from across the stars. Is this not so?"

"It is so."

"And there are those here who govern you now?"

"No. We are free."

"How did you become free?" she demanded fiercely.

Travis hesitated. He did not want to tell of the wrecked ship, the fact
that his people possessed no real defenses against the
Russian-controlled colony.

"We went to the mountains," he replied evasively.

"Your governing machine failed?" Kaydessa laughed. "Ah, they are so
great, those men of the machines. But they are smaller and weaker when
their machines cannot obey them."

"It is so with your camp?" Travis probed gently. He was not quite sure
of her meaning, but he dared not ask more detailed questions without
dangerously revealing his own ignorance.

"In some manner their control machine--it can only work upon those
within a certain distance. They discovered that in the days of the first
landing, when hunters went out freely and many of them did not return.
After that when hunters were sent out to learn how lay this land, they
went along in the flyer with a machine so that there would be no more
escapes. But we knew!" Kaydessa's fingers curled into small fists. "Yes,
we knew that if we could get beyond the machines, there was freedom for
us. And we planned--many of us--planned. Then nine or ten sleeps ago
those others were very excited. They gathered in their ship, watching
their machines. And something happened. For a while all those machines
went dead.

"Jagatai, Kuchar, my brother Hulagur, Menlik...." She was counting the
names off on her fingers. "They raided the horse herd, rode out...."

"And you?"

"I, too, should have ridden. But there was Aljar, my sister--Kuchar's
wife. She was very near her time and to ride thus, fleeing and fast,
might kill her and the child. So I did not go. Her son was born that
night, but the others had the machine at work once more. We might long
to go here," she brought her fist up to her breast, and then raised it
to her head--"but there was that _here_ which kept us to the camp and
their will. We only knew that if we could reach the mountains, we might
find our people who had already gained their freedom."

"But you are here. How did you escape?" Tsoay wanted to know.

"They knew that I would have gone had it not been for Aljar. So they
said they would make her ride out with them unless I played guide to
lead them to my brother and the others. Then I knew I must take up the
sword of duty and hunt with them. But I prayed that the spirits of the
upper air look with favor upon me, and they granted aid...." Her eyes
held a look of wonder. "For when we were out on the plains and well away
from the settlement, a grass devil attacked the leader of the searching
party, and he dropped the mind control and so it was broken. Then I
rode. Blue Sky Above knows how I rode. And those others are not with
their horses as are the people of the Wolf."

"When did this happen?"

"Three suns ago."

Travis counted back in his mind. Her date for the failure of the machine
in the Russian camp seemed to coincide with the crash landing of the
American ship. Had one thing any connection with the other? It was very
possible. The planeting spacer might have fought some kind of weird duel
with the other colony before it plunged to earth on the other side of
the mountain range.

"Do you know where in these mountains your people hide?"

Kaydessa shook her head. "Only that I must head south, and when I reach
the highest peak make a signal fire on the north slope. But that I
cannot do now, for those in the flyer may see it. I know they are on my
trail, for twice I have seen it. Listen, Fox, I ask this of you--I,
Kaydessa, who am eldest daughter to the Khan--for you are like unto us,
a warrior and a brave man, that I believe. It may be that you cannot be
governed by their machine, for you have not rested under their spell,
nor are of our blood. Therefore, if they come close enough to send forth
the call, the call I must obey as if I were a slave dragged upon a horse
rope, then do you bind my hands and feet and hold me here, no matter how
much I struggle to follow that command. For that which is truly me does
not want to go. Will you swear this by the fires which expel demons?"

The utter sincerity of her tone convinced Travis that she was pleading
for aid against a danger she firmly believed in. Whether she was right
about his immunity to the Russian mental control was another matter, and
one he would rather not put to the test.

"We do not swear by your fires, Blue Wolf Maiden, but by the Path of the
Lightning." His fingers moved as if to curl about the sacred charred
wood his people had once carried as "medicine." "So do I promise!"

She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded in satisfaction.

They left the pool and pushed on toward the mountain slopes, working
their way back to the pass. A low growl out of the dark brought them to
an instant halt. Naginlta's warning was sharp; there was danger ahead,
acute danger.

The moonlight from the moons made a weird pattern of light and dark on
the stretch ahead. Anything from a slinking four-footed hunter to a war
party of intelligent beings might have been lying in wait there.

A flitting shadow out of shadows. Nalik'ideyu pressed against Travis'
legs, making a barrier of her warm body, attracting his attention to a
spot at the left perhaps a hundred yards on. There was a great splotch
of dark there, large enough to hide a really formidable opponent; that
wordless communication between animal and man told Travis that such an
opponent was just what was lurking there.

Whatever lay in ambush beside the upper track was growing impatient as
its destined prey ceased to advance, the coyotes reported.

"Your left--beyond that pointed rock--in the big shadow--"

"Do you see it?" Tsoay demanded.

"No. But the _mba'a_ do."

The men had their bows ready, arrows set to the cords. But in this light
such weapons were practically useless unless the enemy moved into the
path of the moon.

"What is it?" Kaydessa asked in a half whisper.

"Something waits for us ahead."

Before he could stop her, she set her fingers to her lips and gave a
piercing whistle.

There was answering movement in the shadow. Travis shot at that, his
arrow followed instantly by one from Tsoay. There was a cry, scaling up
in a throat-scalding scream which made Travis flinch. Not because of
the sound, but because of the hint which lay behind it--could it have
been a human cry?

The thing flopped out into a patch of moonlight. It was four-limbed, its
body silvery--and it was large. But the worst was that it had been
groveling on all fours when it fell, and now it was rising on its hind
feet, one forepaw striking madly at the two arrows dancing head-deep in
its upper shoulder. Man? No! But something sufficiently manlike to chill
the three downtrail.

A whirling four-footed hunter dashed in, snapped at the creature's legs,
and it squalled again, aiming a blow with a forepaw; but the attacking
coyote was already gone. Together Naginlta and Nalik'ideyu were
harassing the creature, just as they had fought the split horn, giving
the hunters time to shoot. Travis, although he again felt that touch of
horror and disgust he could not account for, shot again.

Between them the Apaches must have sent a dozen arrows into the raving
beast before it went to its knees and Naginlta sprang for its throat.
Even then the coyote yelped and flinched, a bleeding gash across its
head from the raking talons of the dying thing. When it no longer moved,
Travis approached to see more closely what they had brought down. That
smell....

Just as the embroidery on Kaydessa's jacket had awakened memories from
his Terran past, so did this stench remind him of something.
Where--when--had he smelled it before? Travis connected it with dark,
dark and danger. Then he gasped in a half exclamation.

Not on this world, no, but on two others: two worlds of that broken
stellar empire where he had been an involuntary explorer two planet
years ago! The beast things which had lived in the dark of the desert
world the Terrans' wandering galactic derelict had landed upon. Yes, the
beast things whose nature they had never been able to deduce. Were they
the degenerate dregs of a once intelligent species? Or were they
animals, akin to man, but still animals?

The ape-things had controlled the night of the desert world. And they
had been met again--also in the dark--in the ruins of the city which had
been the final goal of the ship's taped voyage. So they were a part of
the vanished civilization. And Travis' own vague surmise concerning
Topaz was proven correct. This had not been an empty world for the
long-gone space people. This planet had a purpose and a use, or else
this beast would not have been here.

"Devil!" Kaydessa made a face of disgust.

"You know it?" Tsoay asked Travis. "What is it?"

"That I do not know, but it is a thing left over from the star people's
time. And I have seen it on two other of their worlds."

"A man?" Tsoay surveyed the body critically. "It wears no clothes, has
no weapons, but it walks erect. It looks like an ape, a very big ape. It
is not a good thing, I think."

"If it runs with a pack--as they do elsewhere--this could be a very bad
thing." Travis, remembering how these creatures had attacked in force on
the other worlds, looked about him apprehensively. Even with the coyotes
on guard, they could not stand up to such a pack closing in through the
dark. They had better hole up in some defendable place and wait out the
rest of the night.

Naginlta brought them to a cliff overhang where they could set their
backs to the hard rock of the mountain, face outward to a space they
could cover with arrow flight if the need arose. And the coyotes, lying
before them with their noses resting on paws, would, Travis knew, alert
them long before the enemy could close in.

They huddled against the rock, Kaydessa between them, alert at first to
every sound of the night, their hearts beating faster at a small scrape
of gravel, the rustle of a bush. Slowly, they began to relax.

"It is well that two sleep while one guards," Travis observed. "By
morning we must push on, out of this country."

So the two Apaches shared the watch in turn, the Tatar girl at first
protesting, and then falling exhausted into a slumber which left her
breathing heavily.

Travis, on the dawn watch, began to speculate about the ape-thing they
had killed. The two previous times he had met this creature it had been
in ruins of the old empire. Were there ruins somewhere here? He wanted
to make sure about that. On the other hand, there was the problem of the
Tatar-Mongol settlement controlled by the Reds. There was no doubt in
his mind that, were the Reds to suspect the existence of the Apache
camp, they would make every attempt to hunt down and kill or capture the
survivors from the American ship. A warning must be carried to the
rancheria as quickly as they could make the return trip.

Beside him the girl stirred, raising her head. Travis glanced at her and
then watched with attention. She was looking straight ahead, her eyes as
fixed as if she were in a trance. Now she inched forward from the
mountain wall, wriggling out of its shelter.

"What--?" Tsoay had awakened again. But Travis was already moving. He
pushed on, rushing up to stand beside her, shoulder to shoulder.

"What is it? Where do you go?" he asked.

She made no answer, did not even seem aware of his voice. He caught at
her arm and she pulled to free herself. When he tightened his grip she
did not fight him actively as during their first encounter, but merely
pulled and twisted as if she were being compelled to go ahead.

Compulsion! He remembered her plea the night before, asking his help
against recapture by the machine. Now he deliberately tripped her,
twisted her hands behind her back. She swayed in his hold, trying to win
to her feet, paying no attention to him save as a hindrance against her
answering that demanding call he could not hear.


7


"What happened?" Tsoay took a swift stride, stood over the writhing girl
whose strength was now such that Travis had to exert all his efforts to
control her.

"I think that the machine she spoke about is holding her. She is being
drawn to it out of hiding as one draws a calf on a rope."

Both coyotes had arisen and were watching the struggle with interest,
but there was no warning from them. Whatever called Kaydessa into such
mindless and will-less answer did not touch the animals. And neither
Apache felt it. So perhaps only Kaydessa's people were subject to it, as
she had thought. How far away was that machine? Not too near, for
otherwise the coyotes would have traced the man or men operating it.

"We cannot move her," Tsoay brought the problem into the open--"unless
we bind and carry her. She is one of their kind. Why not let her go to
them, unless you fear she will talk." His hand went to the knife in his
belt, and Travis knew what primitive impulse moved in the younger man.

In the old days a captive who was likely to give trouble was
efficiently eliminated. In Tsoay that memory was awake now. Travis shook
his head.

"She has said that others of her kin are in these hills. We must not set
two wolf packs hunting us," Travis said, giving the more practical
reason which might better appeal to that savage instinct for
self-preservation. "But you are right, since she has tried to answer
this summons, we cannot force her with us. Therefore, do you take the
back trail. Tell Buck what we have discovered and have him make the
necessary precautions against either these Mongol outlaws or a Red
thrust over the mountains."

"And you?"

"I stay to discover where the outlaws hide and learn all I can of this
settlement. We may have reason to need friends----"

"Friends!" Tsoay spat. "The People need no friends! If we have warning,
we can hold our own country! As the Pinda-lick-o-yi have discovered
before."

"Bows and arrows against guns and machines?" Travis inquired bitingly.
"We must know more before we make any warrior boasts for the future.
Tell Buck what we have discovered. Also say I will join you before,"
Travis calculated--"ten suns. If I do not, send no search party; the
clan is too small to risk more lives for one."

"And if these Reds take you--?"

Travis grinned, not pleasantly. "They shall learn nothing! Can their
machines sort out the thoughts of a dead man?" He did not intend his
future to end as abruptly as that, but also he would not be easy meat
for any Red hunting party.

Tsoay took a share of their rations and refused the company of the
coyotes. Travis realized that for all his seeming ease with the animals,
the younger scout had little more liking for them than Deklay and the
others back at the rancheria. Tsoay went at dawn, aiming at the pass.

Travis sat down beside Kaydessa. They had bound her to a small tree, and
she strove incessantly to free herself, turning her head at an acute and
painful angle, only to face the same direction in which she had been
tied. There was no breaking the spell which held her. And she would soon
wear herself out with that struggling. Then he struck an expert blow.

The girl sagged limply, and he untied her. It all depended now on the
range of the beam or broadcast of that diabolical machine. From the
attitude of the coyotes, he assumed that those using the machine had not
made any attempt to come close. They might not even know where their
quarry was; they would simply sit and wait in the foothills for the
caller to reel in a helpless captive.

Travis thought that if he moved Kaydessa farther away from that point,
sooner or later they would be out of range and she would awake from the
knockout, free again. Although she was not light, he could manage to
carry her for a while. So burdened, Travis started on, with the coyotes
scouting ahead.

He speedily discovered that he had set himself an ambitious task. The
going was rough, and carrying the girl reduced his advance to a
snail-paced crawl. But it gave him time to make careful plans.

As long as the Reds held the balance of power on this side of the
mountain range, the rancheria was in danger. Bows and knives against
modern armament was no contest at all. And it would only be a matter of
time before exploration on the part of the northern settlement--or some
tracking down of Tatar fugitives--would bring the enemy across the pass.

The Apaches could move farther south into the unknown continent below
the wrecked ship, thus prolonging the time before they were discovered.
But that would only postpone the inevitable showdown. Whether Travis
could make his clan believe that, was also a matter of concern.

On the other hand, if the Red overlords could be met in some practical
way.... Travis' mind fastened on that more attractive idea, worrying it
as Naginlta worried a prey, tearing out and devouring the more delicate
portions. Every bit of sense and prudence argued against such an
approach, whose success could rest only between improbability and
impossibility; yet that was the direction in which he longed to move.

Across his shoulder Kaydessa stirred and moaned. The Apache doubled his
efforts to reach the outcrop of rock he could see ahead, chiseled into
high relief by the winds. In its lee they would have protection from any
sighting from below. Panting, he made it, lowering the girl into the
guarded cup of space, and waited.

She moaned again, lifted one hand to her head. Her eyes were half open,
and still he could not be sure whether they focused on him and her
surroundings intelligently or not.

"Kaydessa!"

Her heavy eyelids lifted, and he had no doubt she could see him. But
there was no recognition of his identity in her gaze, only surprise and
fear--the same expression she had worn during their first meeting in the
foothills.

"Daughter of the Wolf," he spoke slowly. "Remember!" Travis made that an
order, an emphatic appeal to the mind under the influence of the caller.

She frowned, the struggle she was making naked on her face. Then she
answered:

"You--Fox--"

Travis grunted with relief, his alarm subsiding. Then she _could_
remember.

"Yes," he responded eagerly.

But she was gazing about, her puzzlement growing. "Where is this--?"

"We are higher in the mountains."

Now fear was pushing out bewilderment. "How did I come here?"

"I brought you." Swiftly he outlined what had happened at their night
camp.

The hand which had been at her head was now pressed tight across her
lips as if she were biting furiously into its flesh to still some panic
of her own, and her gray eyes were round and haunted.

"You are free now," Travis said.

Kaydessa nodded, and then dropped her hand to speak. "You brought me
away from the hunters. You did not have to obey them?"

"I heard nothing."

"You do not hear--you feel!" She shuddered. "Please." She clawed at the
stone beside her, pulling up to her feet. "Let us go--let us go quickly!
They will try again--move farther in--"

"Listen," Travis had to be sure of one thing--"have they any way of
knowing that they had you under control and that you have again
escaped?"

Kaydessa shook her head, some of the panic again shadowing her eyes.

"Then we'll just go on--" his chin lifted to the wastelands before
them--"try to keep out of their reach."

And away from the pass to the south, he told himself silently. He dared
not lead the enemy to that secret, so he must travel west or hole up
somewhere in this unknown wilderness until they could be sure Kaydessa
was no longer susceptible to that call, or that they were safely beyond
its beamed radius. There was the chance of contacting her outlaw kin,
just as there was the chance of stumbling into a pack of the ape-things.
Before dark they must discover a protected camp site.

They needed water, food. He had a bare half dozen ration tablets. But
the coyotes could locate water.

"Come!" Travis beckoned to Kaydessa, motioning her to climb ahead of him
so that he could watch for any indication of her succumbing once again
to the influence of the enemy. But his burdened early morning flight had
told on Travis more than he thought, and he discovered he could not spur
himself on to a pace better than a walk. Now and again one of the
coyotes, usually Nalik'ideyu, would come into view, express impatience
in both stance and mental signal, and then be gone again. The Apache was
increasingly aware that the animals were disturbed, yet to his tentative
gropings at contact they did not reply. Since they gave no warning of
hostile animal or man, he could only be on constant guard, watching the
countryside about him.

They had been following a ledge for several minutes before Travis was
aware of some strange features of that path. Perhaps he had actually
noted them with a trained eye before his archaeological studies of the
recent past gave him a reason for the faint marks. This crack in the
mountain's skin might have begun as a natural fault, but afterward it
had been worked with tools, smoothed, widened to serve the purpose of
some form of intelligence!

Travis caught at Kaydessa's shoulder to slow her pace. He could not have
told why he did not want to speak aloud here, but he felt the need for
silence. She glanced around, perplexed, more so when he went down on his
knees and ran his fingers along one of those ancient tool marks. He was
certain it was very old. Inside of him anticipation bubbled. A road made
with such labor could only lead to something of importance. He was going
to make the discovery, the dream which had first drawn him into these
mountains.

"What is it?" Kaydessa knelt beside him, frowning at the ledge.

"This was cut by someone, a long time ago," Travis half whispered and
then wondered why. There was no reason to believe the road makers could
hear him when perhaps a thousand years or more lay between the chipping
of that stone and this day.

The Tatar girl looked over her shoulder. Perhaps she too was troubled by
the sense that here time was subtly telescoped, that past and present
might be meeting. Or was that feeling with them both because of their
enforced conditioning?

"Who?" Now her voice sank in turn.

"Listen--" he regarded her intently--"did your people or the Reds ever
find any traces of the old civilization here--ruins?"

"No." She leaned forward, tracing with her own finger the same
almost-obliterated marks which had intrigued Travis. "But I think they
have looked. Before they discovered that we could be free, they sent out
parties--to hunt, they said--but afterward they always asked many
questions about the country. Only they never asked about ruins. Is that
what they wished us to find? But why? Of what value are old stones piled
on one another?"

"In themselves, little, save for the knowledge they may give us of the
people who piled them. But for what the stones might contain--much
value!"

"And how do you know what they might contain, Fox?"

"Because I have seen such treasure houses of the star men," he returned
absently. To him the marks on the ledge were a pledge of greater
discoveries to come. He must find where that carefully constructed road
ran--to what it led. "Let us see where this will take us."

But first he gave the chittering signal in four sharp bursts. And the
tawny-gray bodies came out of the tangled brush, bounding up to the
ledge. Together the coyotes faced him, their attention all for his
halting communication.

Ruins might lie ahead; he hoped that they did. But on another planet
such ruins had twice proved to be deadly traps, and only good fortune
had prevented their closing on Terran explorers. If the ape-things or
any other dangerous form of life had taken up residence before them, he
wanted good warning.

Together the coyotes turned and loped along the now level way of the
ledge, disappearing around a curve fitted to the mountain side while
Travis and Kaydessa followed.

They heard it before they saw its source--a waterfall. Probably not a
large one, but high. Rounding the curve, they came into a fine mist of
spray where sunlight made rainbows of color across a filmy veil of
water.

For a long moment they stood entranced. Kaydessa then gave a little cry,
held out her hands to the purling mist and brought them to her lips
again to suck the gathered moisture.

Water slicked the surface of the ledge, and Travis pushed her back
against the wall of the cliff. As far as he could discern, their road
continued behind the out-flung curtain of water, and footing on the wet
stone was treacherous. With their backs to the solid security of the
wall, facing outward into the solid drape of water, they edged behind it
and came out into rainbowed sunlight again.

Here either provident nature or ancient art had hollowed a pocket in the
stone which was filled with water. They drank. Then Travis filled his
canteen while Kaydessa washed her face, holding the cold freshness of
the moisture to her cheeks with both palms.

She spoke, but he could not hear her through the roar. She leaned closer
and raised her voice to a half shout:

"This is a place of spirits! Do you not also feel their power, Fox?"

Perhaps for a space out of time he did feel something. This was a
watering place, perhaps a never-ceasing watering place--and to his
desert-born-and-bred race all water was a spirit gift never to be taken
for granted. The rainbow--the Spirit People's sacred sign--old beliefs
stirred in Travis, moving him. "I feel," he said, nodding in emphasis to
his agreement.

They followed the ledge road to a section where a landslide of an
earlier season had choked it. Travis worked a careful way across the
debris, Kaydessa obeying his guidance in turn. Then they were on a
sloping downward way which led to a staircase--the treads weather-worn
and crumbling, the angle so steep Travis wondered if it had ever been
intended for beings with a physique approximating the Terrans'.

They came to a cleft where an arch of stone was chiseled out as a
roofing. Travis thought he could make out a trace of carving on the
capstone, so worn by years and weather that it was now only a faint
shadow of design.

The cleft was a door into another valley. Here, too, golden mist swirled
in tendrils to disguise and cloak what stood there. Travis had found his
ruins. Only the structures were intact, not breached by time.

Mist flowed in lapping tongues back and forth, confusing outlines, now
shuttering, now baring oval windows which were spaced in diamonds of
four on round tower surfaces. There were no visible cracks, no cloaking
of climbing vegetation, nothing to suggest age and long roots in the
valley. Nor did the architecture he could view match any he had seen on
those other worlds.

Travis strode away from the cleft doorway. Under his moccasins was a
block pavement, yellow and green stone set in a simple pattern of
checks. This, too, was level, unchipped and undisturbed, save for a
drift or two of soil driven in by the wind. And nowhere could he see any
vegetation.

The towers were of the same green stone as half the pavement blocks, a
glassy green which made him think of jade--if jade could be mined in
such quantities as these five-story towers demanded.

Nalik'ideyu padded to him, and he could hear the faint click of her
claws on the pavement. There was a deep silence in this place, as if the
air itself swallowed and digested all sound. The wind which had been
with them all the day of their journeying was left beyond the cleft.

Yet there was life here. The coyote told him that in her own way. She
had not made up her mind concerning that life--wariness and curiosity
warred in her now as her pointed muzzle lifted toward the windows
overhead.

The windows were all well above ground level, but there was no opening
in the first stories as far as Travis could see. He debated moving into
the range of those windows to investigate the far side of the towers for
doorways. The mist and the message from Nalik'ideyu nourished his
suspicions. Out in the open he would be too good a target for whatever
or whoever might be standing within the deep-welled frames.

The silence was shattered by a boom. Travis jumped, slewed half around,
knife in hand.

Boom-boom ... a second heavy beat-beat ... then a clangor with a
swelling echo.

Kaydessa flung back her head and called, her voice rising up as if
tunneled by the valley walls. She then whistled as she had done when
they fronted the ape-thing and ran on to catch at Travis' sleeve, her
face eager.

"My people! Come--it is my people!"

She tugged him on before breaking into a run, weaving fearlessly around
the base of one of the towers. Travis ran after her, afraid he might
lose her in the mist.

Three towers, another stretch of open pavement, and then the mist lifted
to show them a second carved doorway not two hundred yards ahead. The
boom-boom seemed to pull Kaydessa, and Travis could do nothing but trail
her, the coyotes now trotting beside him.


8


They burst through a last wide band of mist into a wilderness of tall
grass and shrubs. Travis heard the coyotes give tongue, but it was too
late. Out of nowhere whirled a leather loop, settling about his chest,
snapping his arms tight to his body, taking him off his feet with a jerk
to be dragged helplessly along the ground behind a galloping horse.

A tawny fury sprang in the air to snap at the horse's head. Travis
kicked fruitlessly, trying to regain his feet as the horse reared, and
fought against the control of his shouting rider. All through the melee
the Apache heard Kaydessa shrilly screaming words he did not understand.

Travis was on his knees, coughing in the dust, exerting the muscles in
his chest and shoulders to loosen the lariat. On either side of him the
coyotes wove a snarling pattern of defiance, dashing back and forth to
present no target for the enemy, yet keeping the excited horses so
stirred up that their riders could use neither ropes nor blades.

Then Kaydessa ran between two of the ringing horses to Travis and jerked
at the loop about him. The tough, braided leather eased its hold, and he
was able to gasp in full lungfuls of air. She was still shouting, but
the tone had changed from one of recognition to a definite scolding.

Travis won to his feet just as the rider who had lassoed him finally got
his horse under rein and dismounted. Holding the rope, the man walked
hand over hand toward them, as Travis back on the Arizona range would
have approached a nervous, unschooled pony.

The Mongol was an inch or so shorter than the Apache, and his face was
young, though he had a drooping mustache bracketing his mouth with
slender spear points of black hair. His breeches were tucked into high
red boots, and he wore a loose felt jacket patterned with the same
elaborate embroidery Travis had seen on Kaydessa's. On his head was a
hat with a wide fur border--in spite of the heat--and that too bore
touches of scarlet and gold design.

Still holding his lariat, the Mongol reached Kaydessa and stood for a
moment, eying her up and down before he asked a question. She gave an
impatient twitch to the rope. The coyotes snarled, but the Apache
thought the animals no longer considered the danger immediate.

"This is my brother Hulagur." Kaydessa made the introduction over her
shoulder. "He does not have your speech."

Hulagur not only did not understand, he was also impatient. He jerked at
the rope with such sudden force that Travis was almost thrown. Then
Kaydessa dragged as fiercely on the lariat in the other direction and
burst into a soaring harangue which drew the rest of the men closer.

Travis flexed his upper arms, and the slack gained by Kaydessa's action
made the lariat give again. He studied the Tatar outlaws. There were
five of them beside Hulagur, lean men, hard-faced, narrow-eyed, the
ragged clothing of three pieced out with scraps of hide. Besides the
swords with the curved blades, they were armed with bows, two to each
man, one long, one shorter. One of the riders carried a lance, long
tassels of woolly hair streaming from below its head. Travis saw in them
a formidable array of barbaric fighting men, but he thought that man for
man the Apaches could not only take on the Mongols with confidence, but
might well defeat them.

The Apache had never been a hot-headed, ride-for-glory fighter like the
Cheyenne, the Sioux, and the Comanche of the open plains. He estimated
the odds against him, used ambush, trick, and every feature of the
countryside as weapon and defense. Fifteen Apache fighting men under
Chief Geronimo had kept five thousand American and Mexican troops in the
field for a year and had come off victorious for the moment.

Travis knew the tales of Genghis Khan and his formidable generals who
swept over Asia into Europe, unbeaten and seemingly undefeatable. But
they had been a wild wave, fed by a reservoir of manpower from the
steppes of their homeland, utilizing driven walls of captives to protect
their own men in city assaults and attacks. He doubted if even that
endless sea of men could have won the Arizona desert defended by Apaches
under Cochise, Victorio, or Magnus Colorado. The white man had done
it--by superior arms and attrition; but bow against bow, knife against
sword, craft and cunning against craft and cunning--he did not think
so....

Hulagur dropped the end of the lariat, and Kaydessa swung around,
loosening the loop so that the rope fell to Travis' feet. The Apache
stepped free of it, turned and passed between two of the horsemen to
gather up the bow he had dropped. The coyotes had gone with him and when
he turned again to face the company of Tatars, both animals crowded past
him to the entrance of the valley, plainly urging him to retire there.

The horsemen had faced about also, and the warrior with the lance
balanced the shaft of the weapon in his hand as if considering the
possibility of trying to spear Travis. But just then Kaydessa came up,
towing Hulagur by a firm hold on his sash-belt.

"I have told this one," she reported to Travis, "how it is between us
and that you also are enemy to those who hunt us. It is well that you
sit together beside a fire and talk of these things."

Again that boom-boom broke her speech, coming from farther out in the
open land.

"You will do this?" She made of it a half question, half statement.

Travis glanced about him. He could dodge back into the misty valley of
the towers before the Tatars could ride him down. However, if he could
patch up some kind of truce between his people and the outlaws, the
Apaches would have only the Reds from the settlement to watch. Too many
times in Terran past had war on two fronts been disastrous.

"I come--carrying this--and not pulled by your ropes." He held up his
bow in an exaggerated gesture so that Hulagur could understand.

Coiling the lariat, the Mongol looked from the Apache bow to Travis.
Slowly, and with obvious reluctance, he nodded agreement.

At Hulagur's call the lancer rode up to the waiting Apache, stretched
out a booted foot in the heavy stirrup, and held down a hand to bring
Travis up behind him riding double. Kaydessa mounted in the same fashion
behind her brother.

Travis looked at the coyotes. Together the animals stood in the door to
the tower valley, and neither made any move to follow as the horses
trotted off. He beckoned with his hand and called to them.

Heads up, they continued to watch him go in company with the Mongols.
Then without any reply to his coaxing, they melted back into the mists.
For a moment Travis was tempted to slide down and run the risk of taking
a lance point between the shoulders as he followed Naginlta and
Nalik'ideyu into retreat. He was startled, jarred by the new awareness
of how much he had come to depend on the animals. Ordinarily, Travis Fox
was not one to be governed by the wishes of a _mba'a_, intelligent and
un-animallike as it might be. This was an affair of men, and coyotes had
no part in it!

Half an hour later Travis sat in the outlaw camp. There were fifteen
Mongols in sight, a half dozen women and two children adding to the
count. On a hillock near their yurts, the round brush-and-hide
shelters--not too different from the wickiups of Travis' own people--was
a crude drum, a hide stretched taut over a hollowed section of log. And
next to that stood a man wearing a tall pointed cap, a red robe, and a
girdle from which swung a fringe of small bones, tiny animal skulls, and
polished bits of stone and carved wood.

It was this man's efforts which sent the boom-boom sounding at intervals
over the landscape. Was this a signal--part of a ritual? Travis was not
certain, though he guessed that the drummer was either medicine man or
shaman, and so of some power in this company. Such men were credited
with the ability to prophesy and also endowed with mediumship between
man and spirit in the old days of the great Hordes.

The Apache evaluated the rest of the company. As was true of his own
party, these men were much the same age--young and vigorous. And it was
also apparent that Hulagur held a position of some importance among
them--if he were not their chief.

After a last resounding roll on the drum, the shaman thrust the sticks
into his girdle and came down to the fire at the center of the camp. He
was taller than his fellows, pole thin under his robes, his face narrow,
clean-shaven, with brows arched by nature to give him an unchanging
expression of scepticism. He strode along, his tinkling collection of
charms providing him with a not unmusical accompaniment, and came to
stand directly before Travis, eying him carefully.

Travis copied his silence in what was close to a duel of wills. There
was that in the shaman's narrowed green eyes which suggested that if
Hulagur did in fact lead these fighting men, he had an advisor of
determination and intelligence behind him.

"This is Menlik." Kaydessa did not push past the men to the fireside,
but her voice carried.

Hulagur growled at his sister, but his admonition made no impression on
her, and she replied in as hot a tone. The shaman's hand went up,
silencing both of them.

"You are--who?" Like Kaydessa, Menlik spoke a heavily accented English.

"I am Travis Fox, of the Apaches."

"The Apaches," the shaman repeated. "You are of the West, the American
West, then."

"You know much, man of spirit talk."

"One remembers. At times one remembers," Menlik answered almost
absently. "How does an Apache find his way across the stars?"

"The same way Menlik and his people did," Travis returned. "You were
sent to settle this planet, and so were we."

"There are many more of you?" countered Menlik swiftly.

"Are there not many of the Horde? Would one man, or three, or four, be
sent to hold a world?" Travis fenced. "You hold the north, we the south
of this land."

"But _they_ are not governed by a machine!" Kaydessa cut in. "They are
free!"

Menlik frowned at the girl. "Woman, this is a matter for warriors. Keep
your tongue silent between your jaws!"

She stamped one foot, standing with her fists on her hips.

"I am a Daughter of the Blue Wolf. And we are all warriors--men and
women alike--so shall we be as long as the Horde is not free to ride
where we wish! These men have won their freedom; it is well that we
learn how."

Menlik's expression did not change, but his lids drooped over his eyes
as a murmur of what might be agreement came from the group. More than
one of them must have understood enough English to translate for the
others. Travis wondered about that. Had these men and women who had
outwardly reverted to the life of their nomad ancestors once been well
educated in the modern sense, educated enough to learn the basic
language of the nation their rulers had set up as their principal enemy?

"So you ride the land south of the mountains?" the shaman continued.

"That is true."

"Then why did you come hither?"

Travis shrugged. "Why does anyone ride or travel into new lands? There
is a desire to see what may lie beyond----"

"Or to scout before the march of warriors!" Menlik snapped. "There is no
peace between your rulers and mine. Do you ride now to take the herds
and pastures of the Horde--or to try to do so?"

Travis turned his head deliberately from side to side, allowing them all
to witness his slow and openly contemptuous appraisal of their camp.

"_This_ is your Horde, Shaman? Fifteen warriors? Much has changed since
the days of Temujin, has it not?"

"What do you know of Temujin--you, who are a man of no ancestors, out of
the West?"

"What do I know of Temujin? That he was a leader of warriors and became
Genghis Khan, the great lord of the East. But the Apaches had their
warlords also, rider of barren lands. And I am of those who raided over
two nations when Victorio and Cochise scattered their enemies as a man
scatters a handful of dust in the wind."

"You talk bold, Apache...." There was a hint of threat in that.

"I speak as any warrior, Shaman. Or are you so used to talking with
spirits instead of men that you do not realize that?"

He might have been alienating the shaman by such a sharp reply, but
Travis thought he judged the temper of these people. To face them boldly
was the only way to impress them. They would not treat with an inferior,
and he was already at a disadvantage coming on foot, without any backing
in force, into a territory held by horsemen who were suspicious and
jealous of their recently acquired freedom. His only chance was to
establish himself as an equal and then try to convince them that Apache
and Tatar-Mongol had a common cause against the Reds who controlled the
settlement on the northern plains.

Menlik's right hand went to his sash-girdle and plucked out a carved
stick which he waved between them, muttering phrases Travis could not
understand. Had the shaman retreated so far along the road to his past
that he now believed in his own supernatural powers? Or was this to
impress his watching followers?

"You call upon your spirits for aid, Menlik? But the Apache has the
companionship of the _ga-n_. Ask of Kaydessa: Who hunts with the Fox in
the wilds?" Travis' sharp challenge stopped that wand in mid-air.
Menlik's head swung to the girl.

"He hunts with wolves who think like men." She supplied the information
the shaman would not openly ask for. "I have seen them act as his
scouts. This is no spirit thing, but real and of this world!"

"Any man may train a dog to his bidding!" Menlik spat.

"Does a dog obey orders which are not said aloud? These brown wolves
come and sit before him, look into his eyes. And then he knows what lies
within their heads, and they know what he would have them do. This is
not the way of a master of hounds with his pack!"

Again the murmur ran about the camp as one or two translated. Menlik
frowned. Then he rammed his sorcerer's wand back into his sash.

"If you are a man of power--such powers," he said slowly, "then you may
walk alone where those who talk with spirits go--into the mountains." He
then spoke over his shoulder in his native tongue, and one of the women
reached behind her into a hut, brought out a skin bag and a horn cup.
Kaydessa took the cup from her and held it while the other woman poured
a white liquid from the bag to fill it.

Kaydessa passed the cup to Menlik. He pivoted with it in his hand,
dribbling expertly over its brim a few drops at each point of the
compass, chanting as he moved. Then he sucked in a mouthful of the
contents before presenting the vessel to Travis.

The Apache smelled the same sour scent that had clung to the emptied bag
in the foothills. And another part of memory supplied him with the
nature of the drink. This was kumiss, a fermented mare's milk which was
the wine and water of the steppes.

He forced himself to swallow a draft, though it was alien to his taste,
and passed the cup back to Menlik. The shaman emptied the horn and,
with that, set aside ceremony. With an upraised hand he beckoned Travis
to the fire again, indicating a pot set on the coals.

"Rest ... eat!" he bade abruptly.

Night was gathering in. Travis tried to calculate how far Tsoay must
have backtracked to the rancheria. He thought that he could have already
made the pass and be within a day and a half from the Apache camp if he
pushed on, as he would. As to where the coyotes were, Travis had no
idea. But it was plain that he himself must remain in this encampment
for the night or risk rousing the Mongols' suspicion once more.

He ate of the stew, spearing chunks out of the pot with the point of his
knife. And it was not until he sat back, his hunger appeased, that the
shaman dropped down beside him.

"The Khatun Kaydessa says that when she was slave to the caller, you did
not feel its chains," he began.

"Those who rule you are not my overlords. The bonds they set upon your
minds do not touch me." Travis hoped that that was the truth and his
escape that morning had not been just a fluke.

"This could be, for you and I are not of one blood," Menlik agreed.
"Tell me--how did you escape your bonds?"

"The machine which held us so was broken," Travis replied with a portion
of the truth, and Menlik sucked in his breath.

"The machines, always the machines!" he cried hoarsely. "A thing which
can sit in a man's head and make him do what it will against his will;
it is demon sent! There are other machines to be broken, Apache."

"Words will not break them," Travis pointed out.

"Only a fool rides to his death without hope of striking a single blow
before he chokes on the blood in his throat," Menlik retorted. "We
cannot use bow or tulwar against weapons which flame and kill quicker
than any storm lightning! And always the mind machines can make a man
drop his knife and stand helplessly waiting for the slave collar to be
set on his neck!"

Travis asked a question of his own. "I know that they can bring a caller
part way into this mountain, for this very day I saw its effect upon the
maiden. But there are many places in the hills well set for ambushes,
and those unaffected by the machine could be waiting there. Would there
be many machines so that they could send out again and again?"

Menlik's bony hand played with his wand. Then a slow smile curved his
lips into the guise of a hunting cat's noiseless snarl.

"There is meat in that pot, Apache, rich meat, good for the filling of a
lean belly! So men whose minds the machine could not trouble--such men
to be waiting in ambush for the taking of the men who use such a
machine--yes. But here would have to be bait, very good bait for such a
trap, Lord of Wiles. Never do those others come far into the mountains.
Their flyer does not lift well here, and they do not trust traveling on
horseback. They were greatly angered to come so far in to reach
Kaydessa, though they could not have been too close, or you would not
have escaped at all. Yes, strong bait."

"Such bait as perhaps the knowledge that there were strangers across the
mountains?"

Menlik turned his wand about in his hands. He was no longer smiling, and
his glance at Travis was sharp and swift.

"Do you sit as Khan in your tribe, Lord?"

"I sit as one they will listen to." Travis hoped that was so. Whether
Buck and the moderates would hold clan leadership upon his return was a
fact he could not count upon as certain.

"This is a thing which we must hold council over," Menlik continued.
"But it is an idea of power. Yes, one to think about, Lord. And I shall
think...."

He got up and moved away. Travis blinked at the fire. He was very tired,
and he disliked sleeping in this camp. But he must not go without the
rest his body needed to supply him with a clear head in the morning. And
not showing uneasiness might be one way of winning Menlik's confidence.


9


Travis settled his back against the spire of rock and raised his right
hand into the path of the sun, cradling in his palm a disk of glistening
metal. Flash ... flash ... he made the signal pattern just as his
ancestors a hundred years earlier and far across space had used trade
mirrors to relay war alerts among the Chiricahua and White Mountain
ranges. If Tsoay had returned safely, and if Buck had kept the agreed
lookout on that peak a mile or so ahead, then the clan would know that
he was coming and with what escort.

He waited now, rubbing the small metal mirror absently on the loose
sleeve of his shirt, waiting for a reply. Mirrors were best, not smoke
fires which would broadcast too far the presence of men in the hills.
Tsoay must have returned....

"What is it that you do?"

Menlik, his shaman's robe pulled up so that his breeches and boots were
dark against the golden rock, climbed up beside the Apache. Menlik,
Hulagur, and Kaydessa were riding with Travis, offering him one of
their small ponies to hurry the trip. He was still regarded warily by
the Tatars, but he did not blame them for their cautious attitude.

"Ah--" A flicker of light from the point ahead. One ... two ... three
flashes, a pause, then two more together. He had been read. Buck had
dispatched scouts to meet them, and knowing his people's skill at the
business, Travis was certain the Tatars would never suspect their
flanking unless the Apaches purposefully revealed themselves. Also the
Tatars were not to go to the rancheria, but would be met at a mid-point
by a delegation of Apaches. This was no time for the Tatars to learn
just how few the clan numbered.

Menlik watched Travis flash an acknowledgment to the sentry ahead. "In
this way you speak to your men?"

"This way I speak."

"A thing good and to be remembered. We have the drum, but that is for
the ears of all with hearing. This is for the eyes only of those on
watch for it. Yes, a good thing. And your people--they will meet with
us?"

"They wait ahead," Travis confirmed.

It was close to midday and the heat, gathered in the rocky ways, was
like a heaviness in the air itself. The Tatars had shucked their heavy
jackets and rolled the fur brims of their hats far up their heads away
from their sweat-beaded faces. And at every halt they passed from hand
to hand the skin bag of kumiss.

Now even the ponies shuffled on with drooping heads, picking a way in a
cut which deepened into a canyon. Travis kept a watch for the scouts.
And not for the first time he thought of the disappearance of the
coyotes. Somehow, back in the Tatar camp, he had counted confidently on
the animals' rejoining him once he had started his return over the
mountains.

But he had seen nothing of either beast, nor had he felt that
unexplainable mental contact with them which had been present since his
first awakening on Topaz. Why they had left him so unceremoniously after
defending him from the Mongol attack, and why they were keeping
themselves aloof now, he did not know. But he was conscious of a thread
of alarm for their continued absence, and he hoped he would find they
had gone back to the rancheria.

The ponies thudded dispiritedly along a sandy wash which bottomed the
canyon. Here the heat became a leaden weight and the men were panting
like four-footed beasts running before hunters. Finally Travis sighted
what he had been seeking, a flicker of movement on the wall well above.
He flung up his hand, pulling his mount to a stand. Apaches stood in
full view, bows ready, arrows on cords. But they made no sound.

Kaydessa cried out, booted her mount to draw equal with Travis.

"A trap!" Her face, flushed with heat, was also stark with anger.

Travis smiled slowly. "Is there a rope about you, Wolf Daughter?" he
inquired softly. "Are you now dragged across this sand?"

Her mouth opened and then closed again. The quirt she had half raised to
slash at him, flopped across her pony's neck.

The Apache glanced back at the two men. Hulagur's hand was on his sword
hilt, his eyes darting from one of those silent watchers to the next.
But the utter hopelessness of the Tatar position was too plain. Only
Menlik made no move toward any weapon, even his spirit wand. Instead, he
sat quietly in the saddle, displaying no emotion toward the Apaches save
his usual self-confident detachment.

"We go on." Travis pointed ahead.

Just as suddenly as they had appeared from the heart of the golden
cliffs, so did the scouts vanish. Most of them were already on their way
to the point Buck had selected for the meeting place. There had been
only six men up there, but the Tatars had no way of knowing just how
large a portion of the whole clan that number was.

Travis' pony lifted his head, nickered, and achieved a stumbling trot.
Somewhere ahead was water, one of those oases of growth and life which
pocked the whole mountain range--to the preservation of all animals and
all men.

Menlik and Hulagur pushed on until their mounts were hard on the heels
of the two ridden by the girl and Travis. Travis wondered if they still
waited for some arrow to strike home, though he saw that both men rode
with outward disregard for the patrolling scouts.

A grass-leaf bush beckoned them on and again the ponies quickened pace,
coming out into a tributary canyon which housed a small pool and a good
stand of grass and brush. To one side of the water Buck stood, his arms
folded across his chest, armed only with his belt knife. Grouped behind
him were Deklay, Tsoay, Nolan, Manulito--Travis tabulated hurriedly.
Manulito and Deklay were to be classed together--or had been when he was
last in the rancheria. On Buck's stairway from the past, both had
halted more than halfway down. Nolan was a quiet man who seldom spoke,
and whose opinion Travis could not foretell. Tsoay would back Buck.

Probably such a divided party was the best Travis could have hoped to
gather. A delegation composed entirely of those who were ready to leave
the past of the Redax--a collection of Bucks and Jil-Lees--was outside
the bounds of possibility. But Travis was none too happy to have Deklay
in on this.

Travis dismounted, letting the pony push forward by himself to dip nose
into the pool.

"This is," Travis pointed politely with his chin--"Menlik, one who talks
with spirits.... Hulagur, who is son to a chief ... and Kaydessa, who is
daughter to a chief. They are of the horse people of the north." He made
the introduction carefully in English.

Then he turned to the Tatars. "Buck, Deklay, Nolan, Manulito, Tsoay," he
named them all, "these stand to listen, and to speak for the Apaches."

But sometime later when the two parties sat facing each other, he
wondered whether a common decision could come from the clansmen on his
side of that irregular circle. Deklay's expression was closed; he had
even edged a short way back, as if he had no desire to approach the
strangers. And Travis read into every line of Deklay's body his distrust
and antagonism.

He himself began to speak, retelling his adventures since they had
followed Kaydessa's trail, sketching in the situation at the
Tatar-Mongol settlement as he had learned it from her and from Menlik.
He was careful to speak in English so that the Tatars could hear all he
was reporting to his own kind. And the Apaches listened blank-faced,
though Tsoay must already have reported much of this. When Travis was
done it was Deklay who asked a question:

"What have we to do with these people?"

"There is this--" Travis chose his words carefully, thinking of what
might move a warrior still conditioned to riding with the raiders of a
hundred years earlier, "the Pinda-lick-o-yi (whom we call 'Reds,') are
never willing to live side by side with any who are not of their mind.
And they have weapons such as make our bow cords bits of rotten string,
our knives slivers of rust. They do not kill; they enslave. And when
they discover that we live, then they will come against us--"

Deklay's lips moved in a wolf grin. "This is a large land, and we know
how to use it. The Pinda-lick-o-yi will not find us--"

"With their eyes maybe not," Travis replied. "With their machines--that
is another matter."

"Machines!" Deklay spat. "Always these machines.... Is that all you can
talk about? It would seem that you are bewitched by these machines,
which we have not seen--none of us!"

"It was a machine which brought you here," Buck observed. "Go you back
and look upon the spaceship and remember, Deklay. The knowledge of the
Pinda-lick-o-yi is greater than ours when it deals with metal and wire
and things which can be made with both. Machines brought us along the
road of the stars, and there is no tracker in the clan who could hope to
do the same. But now I have this to ask: Does our brother have a plan?"

"Those who are Reds," Travis answered slowly, "they do not number many.
But more may later come from our own world. Have you heard of such
arriving?" he asked Menlik.

"Not so, but we are not told much. We live apart and no one of us goes
to the ship unless he is summoned. For they have weapons to guard them,
or long since they would have been dead. It is not proper for a man to
eat from the pot, ride in the wind, sleep easy under the same sky with
him who has slain his brother."

"They have then killed among your people?"

"They have killed," Menlik returned briefly.

Kaydessa stirred and muttered a word or two to her brother. Hulagur's
head came up, and he exploded into violent speech.

"What does he say?" Deklay demanded.

The girl replied: "He speaks of our father who aided in the escape of
three and so afterward was slain by the leader as a lesson to us--since
he was our 'white beard,' the Khan."

"We have taken the oath in blood--under the Wolf Head Standard--that
they will also die," Menlik added. "But first we must shake them out of
their ship-shell."

"That is the problem," Travis elaborated for the benefit of his
clansmen. "We must get these Reds away from their protected camp--out
into the open. When they now go they are covered by this 'caller' which
keeps the Tatars under their control, but it has no effect on us."

"So, again I say: What is all this to us?" Deklay got to his feet. "This
machine does not hunt us, and we can make our camps in this land where
no Pinda-lick-o-yi can find them----"

"We are not _dobe-gusndhe-he_--invulnerable. Nor do we know the full
range of machines they can use. It does no one well to say
'_doxa-da_'--this is not so--when he does not know all that lies in an
enemy's wickiup."

To Travis' relief he saw agreement mirrored on Buck's face, Tsoay's,
Nolan's. From the beginning he had had little hope of swaying Deklay; he
could only trust that the verdict of the majority would be the accepted
one. It went back to the old, old Apache institution of prestige. A
_nantan_-chief had the _go'ndi_, the high power, as a gift from birth.
Common men could possess horse power or cattle power; they might have
the gift of acquiring wealth so they could make generous gifts--be
_ikadntl'izi_, the wealthy ones who spoke for their family groups within
the loose network of the tribe. But there was no hereditary
chieftainship or even an undivided rule within a rancheria. The
_nagunlka-dnat'an_, or war chief, often led only on the warpath and had
no voice in clan matters save those dealing with a raid.

And to have a split now would fatally weaken their small clan. Deklay
and those of a like mind might elect to withdraw and not one of the rest
could deny him that right.

"We shall think on this," Buck said. "Here is food, water, pasturage for
horses, a camp for our visitors. They will wait here." He looked at
Travis. "You will wait with them, Fox, since you know their ways."

Travis' immediate reaction was objection, but then he realized Buck's
wisdom. To offer the proposition of alliance to the Apaches needed an
impartial spokesman. And if he himself did it, Deklay might
automatically oppose the idea. Let Buck talk and it would be a statement
of fact.

"It is well," Travis agreed.

Buck looked about, as if judging time from the lie of sun and shadow on
the ground. "We shall return in the morning when the shadow lies here."
With the toe of his high moccasin he made an impression in the soft
earth. Then, without any formal farewell, he strode off, the others fast
on his heels.

"He is your chief, that one?" Kaydessa asked, pointing after Buck.

"He is one having a large voice in council," Travis replied. He set
about building up the cooking fire, bringing out the body of a
split-horn calf which had been left them. Menlik sat on his heels by the
pool, dipping up drinking water with his hand. Now he squinted his eyes
against the probe of the sun.

"It will require much talking to win over the short one," he observed.
"That one does not like us or your plan. Just as there will be those
among the Horde who will not like it either." He flipped water drops
from his fingers. "But this I do know, man who calls himself Fox, if we
do not make a common cause, then we have no hope of going against the
Reds. It will be for them as a man crushing fleas." He brought his hand
down on his knee in emphatic slaps. "So ... and so ... and so!"

"This do I think also," Travis admitted.

"So let us both hope that all men will be as wise as we," Menlik said,
smiling. "And since we can take a hand in that decision, this remains a
time for rest."

The shaman might be content to sleep the afternoon away, but after he
had eaten, Hulagur wandered up and down the valley, making a lengthy
business of rubbing down their horses with twists of last season's
grass. Now and then he paused beside Kaydessa and spoke, his uneasiness
plain to Travis although he could not understand the words.

Travis had settled down in the shade, half dozing, yet alert to every
movement of the three Tatars. He tried not to think of what might be
happening in the rancheria by switching his mind to that misty valley of
the towers. Did any of those three alien structures contain such a grab
bag of the past as he, Ashe, and Murdock had found on that other world
where the winged people had gathered together for them the artifacts of
an older civilization? At that time he had created for their hosts a new
weapon of defense, turning metal tubes into blow-guns. It had been
there, too, where he had chanced upon the library of tapes, one of which
had eventually landed Travis and his people here on Topaz.

Even if he did find racks of such tapes in one of those towers, there
would be no way of using them--with the ship wrecked on the mountain
side. Only--Travis' fingers itched where they lay quiet on his
knees--there might be other things waiting. If he were only free to
explore!

He reached out to touch Menlik's shoulder. The shaman half turned,
opening his eyes with the languid effort of a sleepy cat. But the spark
of intelligence awoke in them quickly.

"What is it?"

For a moment Travis hesitated, already regretting his impulse. He did
not know how much Menlik remembered of the present. Remember of the
present--one part of the Apache's mind was wryly amused at that snarled
estimate of their situation. Men who had been dropped into their racial
and ancestral pasts until the present time was less real than the
dreams conditioning them had a difficult job evaluating any situation.
But since Menlik had clung to his knowledge of English, he must be less
far down that stairway.

"When we met you, Kaydessa and I, it was outside that valley." Travis
was still of two minds about this questioning, but the Tatar camp had
been close to the towers and there was a good chance the Mongols had
explored them. "And inside were buildings ... very old...."

Menlik was fully alert now. He took his wand, played with it as he
spoke:

"That is, or was, a place of much power, Fox. Oh, I know that you
question my kinship with the spirits and the powers they give. But one
learns not to dispute what one feels here--and here--" His long,
somewhat grimy fingers went to his forehead and then to the bare brown
chest where his shirt fell open. "I have walked the stone path in that
valley, and there have been the whispers--"

"Whispers?"

Menlik twirled the wand. "Whispers which are too low for many ears to
distinguish. You can hear them as one hears the buzzing of an insect,
but never the words--no, never the words! But that is a place of great
power!"

"A place to explore!"

But Menlik watched only his wand. "That I wonder, Fox, truly do I
wonder. This is not our world. And here there may be that which does not
welcome us."

Tricks-in-trade of a shaman? Or was it true recognition of something
beyond human description? Travis could not be sure, but he knew that he
must return to the valley and see for himself.

"Listen," Menlik said, leaning closer, "I have heard your tale, that
you were on that first ship, the one which brought you unwilling along
the old star paths. Have you ever seen such a thing as this?"

He smoothed a space of soft earth and with the narrow tip of his wand
began to draw. Whatever role Menlik had played in the present before he
had been reconditioned into a shaman of the Horde, he had had the
ability of an artist, for with a minimum of lines he created a figure in
that sketch.

It was a man or at least a figure with general human outlines. But the
round, slightly oversized skull was bare, the clothing skintight to
reveal unnaturally thin limbs. There were large eyes, small nose and
mouth, rather crowded into the lower third of the head, giving an
impression of an over-expanded brain case above. And it was familiar.

Not the flying men of the other world, certainly not the nocturnal
ape-things. Yet for all its alien quality Travis was sure he had seen
its like before. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize it apart from
lines in the soil.

Such a head, white, almost like the bone of a skull laid bare, such a
head lying face down on a bone-thin arm clad in a blue-purple skintight
sleeve. Where had he seen it?

The Apache gave a sharp exclamation as he remembered fully. The derelict
spaceship as he had first found it--the dead alien officer had still
been seated at its controls! The alien who had set the tape which took
them out into that forgotten empire--he was the subject of Menlik's
drawing!

"Where? When did you see such a one?" The Apache bent down over the
Tatar.

Menlik looked troubled. "He came into my mind when I walked the valley.
I thought I could almost see such a face in one of the tower windows,
but of that I am not sure. Who is it?"

"Someone from the old days--those who once ruled the stars," Travis
answered. But were they still here then, the remnant of a civilization
which had flourished ten thousand years ago? Were the Baldies, who
centuries ago had hunted down so ruthlessly the Russians who had dared
to loot their wrecked ships, still on Topaz?

He remembered the story of Ross Murdock's escape from those aliens in
the far past of Europe, and he shivered. Murdock was tough, steel tough,
yet his own description of that epic chase and the final meeting had
carried with it his terror. What could a handful of primitively armed
and almost primitively minded Terrans do now if they had to dispute
Topaz with the Baldies?


10


"Beyond this--" Menlik worked his way to the very lip of a drop, raising
a finger cautiously--"beyond this we do not go."

"But you say that the camp of your people lies well out in the plains--"
Jil-Lee was up on one knee, using the field glasses they had brought
from the stores of the wrecked ship. He passed them along to Travis.
There was nothing to be sighted but the rippling amber waves of the tall
grasses, save for an occasional break of a copse of trees near the
foothills.

They had reached this point in the early morning, threading through the
pass, making their way across the section known to the outlaws. From
here they could survey the debatable land where their temporary allies
insisted the Reds were in full control.

The result of the conference in the south had been this uneasy alliance.
From the start Travis realized that he could not hope to commit the clan
to any set plan, that even to get this scouting party to come against
the stubborn resistance of Deklay and his reactionaries was a major
achievement. There was now an opening wedge of six Apaches in the
north.

"Beyond this," Menlik repeated, "they keep watch and can control us with
the caller."

"What do you think?" Travis passed the glasses to Nolan.

If they were ever to develop a war chief, this lean man, tall for an
Apache and slow to speak, might fill that role. He adjusted the lenses
and began a detailed study-sweep of the open territory. Then he
stiffened; his mouth, below the masking of the glasses, was tight.

"What is it?" Jil-Lee asked.

"Riders--two ... four ... five.... Also something else--in the air."

Menlik jerked back and grabbed at Nolan's arm, dragging him down by the
weight of his body.

"The flyer! Come back--back!" He was still pulling at Nolan, prodding at
Travis with one foot, and the Apaches stared at him with amazement.

The shaman sputtered in his own language, and then, visibly regaining
command of himself, spoke English once more.

"Those are hunters, and they carry a caller. Either some others have
escaped or they are determined to find our mountain camp."

Jil-Lee looked at Travis. "You did not feel anything when the woman was
under that spell?"

Travis shook his head. Jil-Lee nodded and then said to the shaman: "We
shall stay here and watch. But since it is bad for you--do you go. And
we shall meet you near this place of the towers. Agreed?"

For a moment Menlik's face held a shadowy expression Travis tried to
read. Was it resentment--resentment that he was forced to retreat when
the others could stand their ground? Did the Tatar believe that he lost
face this way? But the shaman gave a grunt of what they took as assent
and slipped over the edge of the lookout point. A moment later they
heard him speaking the Mongol tongue, warning Hulagur and Lotchu, his
companions on the scout. Then came the clatter of pony hoofs as they
rode their mounts away.

The Apaches settled back in the cup, which gave them a wide view over
the plains. Soon it was not necessary to use the glasses in order to
sight the advancing party of hunters--five riders, four wearing Tatar
dress. The fifth had such an odd outline that Travis was reminded of
Menlik's sketch of the alien. Under the sharper vision of the glasses he
saw that the rider was equipped with a pack strapped between his
shoulders and a bulbous helmet covering most of his head. Highly
specialized equipment for communication, Travis guessed.

"That is a 'copter up above," Nolan said. "Different shape from ours."

They had been familiar with helicopters back on Terra. Ranchers used
them for range inspection, and all of the Apache volunteers had flown in
them. But Nolan was correct; this one possessed several unfamiliar
features.

"The Tatars say they don't bring those very far into the mountains,"
Jil-Lee mused. "That could explain their man on horseback; he gets in
where they don't fly."

Nolan fingered his bow. "If these Reds depend upon their machine to
control what they seek, then they may be taken by surprise----"

"But not yet!" Travis spoke sharply. Nolan frowned at him.

Jil-Lee chuckled. "The way is not so dark for us, younger brother, that
we need your torch held for our feet!"

Travis swallowed back any retort, accepting the fairness of that rebuke.
He had no right to believe that he alone knew the best way of handling
the enemy. Biting on the sourness of that realization, he lay quietly
with the others, watching the riders enter the foothills perhaps a
quarter of a mile to the west.

The helicopter was circling now over the men riding into a cut between
two rises. When they were lost to view, the pilot made wider casts, and
Travis thought the flyer's crew were probably in communication with the
helmeted one of the quintet on the ground.

He stirred. "They are heading for the Tatar camp, just as if they know
exactly where it is--"

"That also may be true," Nolan replied. "What do we know of these
Tatars? They have freely said that the Reds can hold them in mind ropes
when they wish. Already they may be so bound. I say--let us go back to
our own country." He added to the decisiveness of that by handing
Jil-Lee the glasses and sliding down from their perch.

Travis looked at the other. In a way he could understand the wisdom of
Nolan's suggestion. But he was sure that withdrawal now would only
postpone trouble. Sooner or later the Apaches would have to stand
against the Reds, and if they could do it now while the enemy was
occupied with trouble from the Tatars, so much the better.

Jil-Lee was following Nolan. But something in Travis rebelled. He
watched the circling helicopter. If it was overhanging the action area
of the horsemen, they had either reined in or were searching a
relatively small section of the foothills.

Reluctantly Travis descended to the hollow where Jil-Lee stood with
Nolan. Tsoay and Lupe and Rope were a little to one side as if the final
orders would come from their seniors.

"It would be well," Jil-Lee said slowly, "if we saw what weapons they
have. I want a closer look at the equipment of that one in the helmet.
Also," he smiled straight at Nolan--"I do not think that they can detect
the presence of warriors of the People unless we will it so."

Nolan ran a finger along the curve of his bow, shot a measuring glance
right and left at the general contours of the country.

"There is wisdom in what you say, elder brother. Only this is a trail we
shall take alone, not allowing the men with fur hats to know where we
walk." He looked pointedly in Travis' direction.

"That is wisdom, _Ba'is'a_," Travis promptly replied, giving Nolan the
old title accorded the leader of a war party. Travis was grateful for
that much of a concession.

They swung into action, heading southeast at an angle which should bring
them across the track of the enemy hunting party. The path was theirs at
last, only moments after the passing of their quarry. None of the five
riders was taking any precautions to cover his trail. Each moved with
the confidence of one not having to fear any attack.

From cover the Apaches looked aloft. They could hear the faint hum of
the helicopter. It was still circling, Tsoay reported from a higher
check point, but those circles remained close over the plains area--the
riders had already passed beyond the limits of that aerial sentry.

Three to a side, the Apaches advanced with the trail between them. They
were carefully hidden when they caught up with the hunters. The four
Tatars were grouped together; the fifth man, heavily burdened by his
pack, had climbed from the saddle and was sitting on the ground, his
hands busy with a flat plate which covered him from upper chest to belt.

Now that he had a chance to see them closely, Travis noted the lack of
expression on the broad Tatar faces. The four men were blank of eye,
astride their mounts with no apparent awareness of their present
surroundings. Then as one, their heads swung around to the helmeted
leader before they dismounted and stood motionless for a long moment in
a way which reminded Travis of the coyotes' attitude when they
endeavored to pass some message to him. But these men even lacked the
signs of thinking intelligence the animals had.

The helmeted man's hand moved across his chest plate, and instantly his
followers came into a measure of life. One put his hand to his forehead
with an odd, half-dazed gesture. Another half crouched, his lips
wrinkling back in a snarl. And the leader, watching him, laughed. Then
he snapped an order, his hand poised over his control plate.

One of the four took the horse reins, made the mounts fast to near-by
bushes. Then as one they began to walk forward, the Red bringing up the
rear several paces behind the nearest Tatar. They were going upslope to
the crest of a small ridge.

The Tatar who first reached the crest put his hands to cup his mouth,
sent a ringing cry southward, and the faint "hu-hu-hu" echoed on and on
through the hills.

Either Menlik had reached the camp in time, or his people were not to be
so easily enticed. For though the hunters waited for a long time, there
was no answer to that hail. At last the helmeted man called his
captives, bringing them sullenly down to mount and ride again--a move
which suited the Apaches.

They could not tell how close was the communication between the rider
and the helicopter. And they were still too near the plains to attack
unless it was necessary for their own protection. Travis dropped back to
join Nolan.

"He controls them by that plate on his chest," he said. "If we would
take them, we must get at that--"

"These Tatars use lariats in fighting. Did they not rope you as a calf
is roped for branding? Then why do they not so take this Red, binding
his arms to his sides?" The suspicion in Nolan's voice was plain.

"Perhaps in them is some conditioned control making it so that they
cannot attack their rulers--"

"I do not like this matter of machines which can play this way and that
with minds and bodies!" flared Nolan. "A man should only _use_ a weapon,
not be one!"

Travis could agree to that. Had they by the wreck of their own ship and
the death of Ruthven, escaped just such an existence as these Tatars now
endured? If so, why? He and all the Apaches were volunteers, eager and
willing to form new world colonies. What had happened back on Terra that
they had been so ruthlessly sent out without warning and under Redax?
Another small piece of that puzzle, or maybe the heart of the whole
picture snapped into place. Had the project learned in some way of the
Tatar settlement on Topaz and so been forced to speed up that
translation from late twentieth-century Americans to primitives? That
would explain a lot!

Travis returned abruptly to the matter now at hand as he saw a peak
ahead. The party they were trailing was heading directly for the outlaw
hide-out. Travis hoped Menlik had warned them in time. There--that wall
of cliff to his left must shelter the valley of the towers, though it
was still miles ahead. Travis did not believe the hunters would be able
to reach their goal unless they traveled at night. They might not know
of the ape-things which could menace the dark.

But the enemy, whether he knew of such dangers or not, did not intend to
press on. As the sun pulled away, leaving crevices and crannies shadow
dark, the hunters stopped to make camp. The Apaches, after their custom
on the war trail, gathered on the heights above.

"This Red seems to think that he shall find those he seeks sitting
waiting for him, as if their feet were nipped tight in a trap," Tsoay
remarked.

"It is the habit of the Pinda-lick-o-yi," Lupe added, "to believe they
are greater than all others. Yet this one is a stupid fool walking into
the arms of a she-bear with a cub." He chuckled.

"A man with a rifle does not fear a man armed only with a stick," Travis
cut in quickly. "This one is armed with a weapon which he has good
reason to believe makes him invulnerable to attack. If he rests tonight,
he probably leaves his machine on guard."

"At least we are sure of one thing," Nolan said in half agreement. "This
one does not suspect that there are any in these hills save those he can
master. And his machine does not work against us. Thus at dawn--" He
made a swift gesture, and they smiled in concert.

At dawn--the old time of attack. An Apache does not attack at night.
Travis was not sure that any of them could break that old taboo and
creep down upon the camp before the coming of new light.

But tomorrow morning they would take over this confident Red, strip him
of his enslaving machine.

Travis' head jerked. It had come as suddenly as a blow between his
eyes--to half stun him. What ... what was it? Not any physical
impact--no, something which was dazing but still immaterial. He braced
his whole body, awaiting its return, trying frantically to understand
what had happened in that instant of vertigo and seeming disembodiment.
Never had he experienced anything like it--or had he? Two years or more
ago when he had gone through the time transfer to enter the Arizona of
the Folsom Men some ten thousand years earlier--that moment of transfer
had been something like this, a sensation of being awry in space and
time with no stable footing to be found.

Yet he was lying here on very tangible rock and soil, and nothing about
him in the shadow-hung landscape of Topaz had changed in the slightest.
But that blow had left behind it a quivering residue of panic buried far
inside him, a tender spot like an open wound.

Travis drew a deep breath which was almost a sob, levered himself up on
one elbow to stare intently down into the enemy camp. Was this some
attack from the other's unknown weapon? Suddenly he was not at all sure
what might happen when the Apaches made that dawn rush.

Jil-Lee was in station on his right. Travis must compare notes with him
to be sure that this was not indeed a trap. Better to retreat now than
to be taken like fish in a net. He crept out of his place, gave the
chittering signal call of the fluff-ball, and heard Jil-Lee's answer in
a cleverly mimicked trill of a night insect.

"Did you feel something just now--in your head?" Travis found it
difficult to put that sensation into words.

"Not so. But you did?"

He had--of course, he had! The remains of it were still in him, that
point of panic. "Yes."

"The machine?"

"I don't know." Travis' confusion grew. It might be that he alone of the
party had been struck. If so, he could be a danger to his own kind.

"This is not good. I think we had better hold council, away from here."
Jil-Lee's whisper was the merest ghost of sound. He chirped again to be
answered from Tsoay upslope, who passed on the signal.

The first moon was high in the sky as the Apaches gathered together.
Again Travis asked his question: Had any of the others felt that odd
blow? He was met by negatives.

But Nolan had the final word: "This is not good," he echoed Jil-Lee's
comment. "If it was the Red machine at work, then we may all be swept
into his net along with those he seeks. Perhaps the longer one remains
close to that thing, the more influence it gains over him. We shall stay
here until dawn. If the enemy would reach the place they seek, then they
must pass below us, for that is the easiest road. Burdened with his
machine, that Red has ever taken the easiest way. So, we shall see if he
also has a defense against these when they come without warning." He
touched the arrows in his quiver.

To kill from ambush meant that they might never learn the secret of the
machine, but after his experience Travis was willing to admit that
Nolan's caution was the wise way. Travis wanted no part of a second
attack like that which had shaken him so. And Nolan had not ordered a
general retreat. It must be in the war chief's thoughts as it was in
Travis' that if the machine could have an influence over Apaches, it
must cease to function.

They set their ambush with the age-old skill the Redax had grafted into
their memories. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

It was an hour after dawn when Tsoay signaled that the enemy was coming,
and shortly after, they heard the thud of ponies' hoofs. The first Tatar
plodded into view, and by the stance of his body in the saddle, Travis
knew the Red had him under full control. Two, then three Tatars passed
between the teeth of the Apache trap. The fourth one had allowed a wider
gap to open between himself and his fellows.

Then the Red leader came. His face below the bulge of the helmet was not
happy. Travis believed the man was not a horseman by inclination. The
Apache set arrow to bow cord, and at the chirp from Nolan, fired in
concert with his clansmen.

Only one of those arrows found a target. The Red's pony gave a shrill
scream of pain and terror, reared, pawing at the air, toppled back,
pinning its shouting rider under it.

The Red had had a defense right enough, one which had somehow deflected
the arrows. But he neither had protection against his own awkward seat
in the saddle nor the arrow which had seriously wounded the now
threshing pony.

Ahead the Tatars twisted and writhed, mouthed tortured cries, then
dropped out of their saddles to lie limply on the ground as if the
arrows aimed at the master had instead struck each to the heart.


11


Either the Red was lucky, or his reactions were quick. He had somehow
rolled clear of the struggling horse as Lupe leaped from behind a
boulder, knife out and ready. To the eyes of the Apaches the helmeted
man lay easy prey to Lupe's attack. Nor did he raise an arm to defend
himself, though one hand lay free across the plate on his chest.

But the young Apache stumbled, rebounding back as if he had run into an
unseen wall--when his knife was still six inches away from the other.
Lupe cried out, shook under a second impact as the Red fired an
automatic with his other hand.

Travis dropped his bow, returned to the most primitive weapon of all.
His hand closed around a stone and he hurled the fist-sized oval
straight at the helmet so clearly outlined against the rocks below.

But even as Lupe's knife had never touched flesh, so was the rock
deflected; the Red was covered by some protective field. This was
certainly nothing the Apaches had seen before. Nolan's whistle summoned
them to draw back.

The Red fired again, the sharp bark of the hand gun harsh and loud. He
did not have any real target, for with the exception of Lupe the Apaches
had gone to earth. Between the rocks the Red was struggling to his feet,
but he moved slowly, favoring his side and one leg; he had not come
totally unharmed from his tumble with the pony.

An armed enemy who could not be touched--one who knew there were more
than outlaws in this region. The Red leader was far more of a threat to
the Apaches now than he had ever been. He must not be allowed to escape.

He was holstering his gun, moving along with one hand against the rocks
to steady himself, trying to reach one of the ponies that stood with
trailing reins beside the inert Tatars.

But when the enemy reached the far side of that rock he would have to
sacrifice either his steadying hold, or his touch on the chest plate
where his other hand rested. Would he, then, for an instant be
vulnerable?

The pony!

Travis put an arrow on bow cord and shot. Not at the Red, who had
released his hold of the rock, preferring to totter instead of lose
control of the chest plate--but into the air straight before the nose of
the mount.

The pony neighed wildly, tried to turn, and its shoulder caught the
free, groping hand of the Red and spun the man around and back, so that
he flung up both hands in an effort to ward himself off the rocks. Then
the pony stampeded down the break, its companions catching the same
fever, trailing in a mad dash which kept the Red hard against the
boulders.

He continued to stand there until the horses, save for the wounded one
still kicking fruitlessly, were gone. Travis felt a sense of reprieve.
They might not be able to get at the Red, but he was hurt and afoot, two
strikes which might yet reduce him to a condition the Apaches could
handle.

Apparently the other was also aware of that, for now he pushed out from
the rocks and stumbled along after the ponies. But he went only a step
or two. Then, settling back once more against a convenient boulder, he
began to work at the plate on his chest.

Nolan appeared noiselessly beside Travis. "What does he do?" His lips
were very close to the younger man's ear, his voice hardly more than a
breath.

Travis shook his head slightly. The Red's actions were a complete
mystery. Unless, now disabled and afoot, he was trying to summon aid.
Though there was no landing place for a helicopter here.

Now was the time to try and reach Lupe. Travis had seen a slight
movement in the fallen Apache's hand, the first indication that the
enemy's shot had not been as fatal as it had looked. He touched Nolan's
arm, pointed to Lupe; and then, discarding his bow and quiver beside the
war leader, he stripped for action. There was cover down to the wounded
Apache which would aid him. He must pass one of the Tatars on the way,
but none of the tribesmen had shown any signs of life since they had
fallen from their saddles at the first attack.

With infinite care, Travis lowered himself into a narrow passage, took a
lizard's way between brush and boulder, pausing only when he reached the
Tatar for a quick check on the potential enemy.

The lean brown face was half turned, one cheek in the sand, but the
slack mouth, the closed eyes were those, Travis believed, of a dead man.
By some action of his diabolic machine the Red must have snuffed out his
four captives--perhaps in the belief that they were part of the Apache
attack.

Travis reached the rock where Lupe lay. He knew that Nolan was watching
the Red and would give him warning if he suddenly showed an interest in
anything but his machine. The Apache reached out, his hands closing on
Lupe's ankles. Beneath his touch, flesh and muscle tensed. Lupe's eyes
were open, focused now on Travis. There was a bleeding furrow above his
right ear. The Red had tried a difficult head shot, failing in his aim
by a mere fraction of an inch.

Lupe made a swift move for which Travis was ready. His grip on the
other's body helped to tumble them both around a rock which lay between
them and the Red. There was the crack of another shot and dust spurted
from the side of the boulder. But they lay together, safe for the
present, as Travis was sure the enemy would not risk an open attack on
their small fortress.

With Travis' aid Lupe struggled back up to the site where Nolan waited.
Jil-Lee was there to make competent examination of the boy's wound.

"Creased," he reported. "A sore head, but no great damage. Perhaps a
scar later, warrior!" He gave Lupe an encouraging thump on the shoulder,
before plastering an aid pack over the cut.

"Now we go!" Nolan spoke with emphatic decision.

"He saw enough of us to know we are not Tatars."

Nolan's eyes were cold, his mouth grim as he faced Travis.

"And how can we fight him--?"

"There is a wall--a wall you cannot see--about him," Lupe broke in.
"When I would strike at him, I could not!"

"A man with invisible protection and a gun," Jil-Lee took up the
argument. "How would you deal with him, younger brother?"

"I don't know," Travis admitted. Yet he also believed that if they
withdrew, left the Red here to be found by his own people, the enemy
would immediately begin an investigation of the southern country.
Perhaps, pushed by their need for learning more about the Apaches, they
would bring the helicopter in over the mountains. The answer to all
Apache dangers, for now, lay in the immediate future of this one man.

"He is hurt, he cannot go far on foot. And even if he calls the 'copter,
there is no landing place. He will have to move elsewhere to be picked
up." Travis thought aloud, citing the thin handful of points in their
favor.

Tsoay nodded toward the rim of the ravine. "Rocks up there and rocks can
roll. Start an earthslide...."

Something within Travis balked at that. From the first he had been
willing enough to slug it out with the Red, weapon to weapon, man to
man. Also, he had wanted to take a captive, not stand over a body. But
to use the nature of the country against the enemy, that was the oldest
Apache trick of all and one they would have to be forced to employ.

Nolan had already nodded in assent, and Tsoay and Jil-Lee started off.
Even if the Red did possess a protective wall device, could it operate
in full against a landslide? They all doubted that.

The Apaches reached the cliff rim without exposing themselves to the
enemy's fire. The Red still sat there calmly, his back against the rock,
his hands busy with his equipment as if he had all the time in the
world.

Then suddenly came a scream from more than one throat.

"_Dar-u-gar_!" The ancient war cry of the Mongol Hordes.

Then over the lip of the other slope rose a wave of men--their curved
swords out, a glazed set to their eyes--heading for the Amerindians with
utter disregard for any personal safety. Menlik in the lead, his
shaman's robe flapping wide below his belt like the wings of some
oversized predatory bird. Hulagur ... Jagatai ... men from the outlaws'
camp. And they were not striving to destroy their disabled overlord in
the vale below, but to wipe out the Apaches!

Only the fact that the Apaches were already sheltered behind the rocks
they were laboring to dislodge gave them a precious few moments of
grace. There was no time to use their bows. They could only use knives
to meet the swords of the Tatars, knives and the fact that they could
fight with unclouded minds.

"He has them under control!" Travis pawed at Jil-Lee's shoulder. "Get
him--they'll stop!"

He did not wait to see if the other Apache understood. Instead, he threw
the full force of his own body against the rock they had made the center
stone of their slide. It gave, rolled, carrying with it and before it
the rest of the piled rubble. Travis stumbled, fell flat, and then a
body thudded down upon him, and he was fighting for his life to keep a
blade from his throat. Around him were the shouts and cries of embroiled
warriors; then all was silenced by a roar from below.

Glazed eyes in a face only a foot from his own, the twisted, panting
mouth sending gusts of breath into his nostrils. Suddenly there was
reason back in those eyes, a bewilderment, which became fear ...
panic.... The Tatar's body twisted in Travis' hold, striving now not to
attack, but to win free. As the Apache loosened his grip the other
jerked away, so that for a moment or two they lay gasping, side by side.

Men sat up to look at men. There was a spreading stain down Jil-Lee's
side and one of the Tatars sprawled near him, both his hands on his
chest, coughing violently.

Menlik clawed at the trunk of a wind-twisted mountain tree, pulled
himself to his feet, and stood swaying as might a man long ill and
recovering from severe exertion.

Insensibly both sides drew apart, leaving a space between Tatar and
Apache. The faces of the Amerindians were grim, those of the Mongols
bewildered and then harsh as they eyed their late opponents with dawning
reason. What had begun in compulsion for the Tatars might well flare now
into rational combat--and from that to a campaign of extermination.

Travis was on his feet. He looked over the lip of the drop. The Red was
still in his place down there, a pile of rubble about him. His
protection must have failed, for his head was back at an unnatural angle
and the dent in his helmet could be easily seen.

"That one is dead--or helpless!" Travis cried out. "Do you still wish to
fight for him, Shaman?"

Menlik came away from the tree and walked to the edge of the drop. The
others, too, were moving forward. After the shaman looked down he
stooped, picked up a small stone, and flung it at the motionless Red.
There was a crack of sound. They all saw the tiny spurt of flame, a curl
of smoke from the plate on the Red's chest. Not only the man, but his
control was finished now.

A wolfish growl and two of the Tatars swung over, started down to the
Red. Menlik shouted and they slackened pace.

"We want that," he cried in English. "Perhaps so we can learn--"

"The learning is yours," Jil-Lee replied. "Just as this land is yours,
Shaman. But I warn you, from this day do not ride south!"

Menlik turned, the charms on his belt clicking. "So that is the way it
is to be, Apache?"

"That is the way it shall be, Tatar! We do not ride to war with allies
who may turn their knives against our backs because they are slaves to a
machine the enemy controls."

The Tatar's long, slender-fingered hands opened and closed. "You are a
wise man, Apache, but sometimes more than wisdom alone is needed----"

"We are wise men, Shaman, let it rest there," Jil-Lee replied somberly.

Already the Apaches were on their way, putting two cliff ridges behind
them before they halted to examine and cover their wounds.

"We go." Nolan's chin lifted, indicating the southern route. "Here we
do not come again; there is too much witchcraft in this place."

Travis stirred, saw that Jil-Lee was frowning at him.

"Go--?" he repeated.

"Yes, younger brother? You would continue to run with these who are
governed by a machine?"

"No. Only, eyes are needed on this side of the mountains."

"Why?" This time Jil-Lee was plainly on the side of the conservatives.
"We have now seen this machine at work. It is fortunate that the Red is
dead. He will carry no tales of us back to his people as you feared.
Thus, if we remain south from now on, we are safe. And this fight
between Tatar and Red is none of ours. What do you seek here?"

"I must go again to the place of the towers," Travis answered with the
truth. But his friends were facing him with heavy disapproval--now a
full row of Deklays.

"Did you not tell us that you felt this strange thing during the night
we waited about the camp? What if you become one with these Tatars and
are also controlled by the machine? Then you, too, can be made into a
weapon against us--your clansmen!" Jil-Lee was almost openly hostile.

Sense was on his side. But in Travis was this other desire of which he
was becoming more conscious by the minute. There was a reason for those
towers, perhaps a reason important enough for him to discover and run
the risk of angering his own people.

"There may be this--" Nolan's voice was remote and cold, "you may
already be a piece of this thing, bound to the machines. If so, we do
not want you among us."

There it was--an open hostility with more power behind it than Deklay's
motiveless disapproval had carried. Travis was troubled. The family, the
clan--they were important. If he took the wrong step now and was
outlawed from that tight fortress, then as an Apache he would indeed be
a lost man. In the past of his people there had been renegades from the
tribe--men such as the infamous Apache Kid who had killed and killed
again, not only white men but his own people. Wolf men living wolves'
lives in the hills. Travis was threatened with that. Yet--up the ladder
of civilization, down the ladder--why did this feverish curiosity ride
him so cruelly now?

"Listen," Jil-Lee, his side padded with bandages, stepped closer--"and
tell me, younger brother, what is it that you seek in these towers?"

"On another world there were secrets of the old ones to be found in such
ancient buildings. Here that might also be true."

"And among the secrets of those old ones," Nolan's voice was still
harsh--"were those which brought us to this world, is that not so?"

"Did any man drive you, Nolan, or you, Tsoay, or you, Jil-Lee, or any of
us, to promise to go beyond the stars? You were told what might be done,
and you were eager to try it. You were all volunteers!"

"Save for this voyage when we were told nothing," Jil-Lee answered,
cutting straight to the heart of the matter. "Yet, Nolan, I do not
believe that it is for more voyage tapes that our younger brother now
searches, nor would those do us any good--as our ship will not rise
again from here. What is it that you do seek?"

"Knowledge--weapons, maybe. Can we stand against these machines of the
Reds? Yet many of the devices they now use are taken from the star ships
they have looted through time. To every weapon there is a defense."

Nolan blinked and for the first time a hint of interest touched the mask
of his face. "To the bow, the rifle," he said softly, "to the rifle, the
machine gun, to the cannon, the big bomb. The defense can be far worse
than the first weapon. So you think that in these towers there may be
things which shall be to the Reds' machines as the bomb is to the cannon
of the Horse Soldiers?"

Travis had an inspiration. "Did not our people lay aside the bow for the
rifle when we went up against the Bluecoats?"

"We do not so go up against these Reds!" protested Lupe.

"Not now. But what if they come across the mountains, perhaps driving
the Tatars before them to do their fighting--?"

"And you believe that if you find weapons in these towers, you will know
how to use them?" Jil-Lee asked. "What will give you that knowledge,
younger brother?"

"I do not claim such knowledge," Travis countered. "But this much I do
have: Once I studied to be an archaeologist and I have seen other
storehouses of these star people. Who else among us can say as much as
that?"

"That is the truth," Jil-Lee acknowledged. "Also there is good sense in
this seeking out of the tower things. Let the Reds find such first--if
they exist at all--and then we may truly be caught in a box canyon with
only death at our heels."

"And you would go to these towers now?" Nolan demanded.

"I can cut across country and then rejoin you on the other side of the
pass!" The feeling of urgency which had been mounting in Travis was now
so demanding that he wanted to race ahead through the wilderness. He was
surprised when Jil-Lee put out his palm up as if to warn the younger
man.

"Take care, younger brother! This is not a lucky business. And remember,
if one goes too far down a wrong trail, there is sometimes no
returning--"

"We shall wait on the other side of the pass for one day," Nolan added.
"Then--" he shrugged--"where you go will be your own affair."

Travis did not understand that promise of trouble. He was already two
steps down his chosen path.


12


Travis had taken a direct cross route through the heights, but not
swiftly enough to reach his objective before nightfall. And he had no
wish to enter the tower valley by moonlight. In him two emotions now
warred. There was the urge to invade the towers, to discover their
secret, and flaring higher and higher the beginnings of a new fear. Was
he now a battlefield for the superstitions of his race reborn by the
Redax and his modern education in the Pinda-lick-o-yi world--half Apache
brave of the past, half modern archaeologist with a thirst for
knowledge? Or was the fear rooted more deeply and for another reason?

Travis crouched in a hollow, trying to understand what he felt. Why was
it suddenly so overwhelmingly important for him to investigate the
towers? If he only had the coyotes with him.... Why and where had they
gone?

He was alive to every noise out of the night, every scent the wind
carried to him. The night had its own life, just as the daylight hours
held theirs. Only a few of those sounds could he identify, even less did
he see. There was one wide-winged, huge flying thing which passed
across the green-gold plate of the nearer moon. It was so large that for
an instant Travis believed the helicopter had come. Then the wings
flapped, breaking the glide, and the creature merged in the shadows of
the night--a hunter large enough to be a serious threat, and one he had
never seen before.

Relying on his own small defense, the strewing of brittle sticks along
the only approach to the hollow, Travis dozed at intervals, his head
down on his forearm across his bent knees. But the cold cramped him and
he was glad to see the graying sky of pre-dawn. He swallowed two ration
tablets and a couple of mouthfuls of water from his canteen and started
on.

By sunup he had reached the ledge of the waterfall, and he hurried along
the ancient road at a pace which increased to a run the closer he drew
to the valley. Deliberately he slowed, his native caution now in
control, so that he was walking as he passed through the gateway into
the swirling mists which alternately exposed and veiled the towers.

There was no change in the scene from the time he had come there with
Kaydessa. But now, rising from a comfortable sprawl on the
yellow-and-green pavement, was a welcoming committee--Nalik'ideyu and
Naginlta showing no more excitement at his coming than if they had
parted only moments before.

Travis went down on one knee, holding out his hand to the female, who
had always been the more friendly. She advanced a step or two, touched a
cold nose to his knuckles, and whined.

"Why?" He voiced that one word, but behind it was a long list of
questions. Why had they left him? Why were they here where there was no
hunting? Why did they meet him now as if they had calmly expected his
return?

Travis glanced from the animals to the towers, those windows set in
diamond pattern. And again he was visited by the impression that he was
under observation. With the mist floating across those openings, it
would be easy for a lurker to watch him unseen.

He walked slowly on into the valley, his moccasins making no sound on
the pavement, but he could hear the faint click of the coyotes' claws as
they paced beside him, on each hand. The sun did not penetrate here,
making merely a gilt fog of the mist. As he approached within touching
distance of the first tower, it seemed to Travis that the mist was
curling about him; he could no longer see the archway through which he
had entered the valley.

"Naye'nezyani--Slayer of Monsters--give strength to the bow arm, to the
knife wrist!" Out of what long-buried memory did that ancient plea come?
Travis was hardly aware of the sense of the words until he spoke them
aloud. "You who wait--_shi inday to-dah ishan_--an Apache is not food
for you! I am Fox of the Itcatcudnde'yu--the Eagle People; and beside me
walk _ga'ns_ of power...."

Travis blinked and shook his head as one waking. Why had he spoken so,
using words and phrases which were not part of any modern speech?

He moved on, around the base of the first tower, to find no door, no
break in its surface below the second-story windows--to the next
structure and the next, until he had encircled all three. If he were to
enter any, he must find a way of reaching the lowest windows.

On he went to the other opening of the valley, the one which gave upon
the territory of the Tatar camp. But he did not sight any of the Mongols
as he hacked down a sapling, trimmed, and smoothed it into a
blunt-pointed lance. His sash-belt, torn into even strips and knotted
together, gave him a rope which he judged would be barely long enough
for his purpose.

Then Travis made a chancy cast for the lower window of the nearest
tower. On the second try the lance slipped in, and he gave a quick jerk,
jamming the lance as a bar across the opening. It was a frail ladder but
the best he could improvise. He climbed until the sill of the window was
within reach and he could pull himself up and over.

The sill was a wide one, at least a twenty-four-inch span between the
inner and outer surface of the tower. Travis sat there for a minute,
reluctant to enter. Near the end of his dangling scarf-rope the two
coyotes lay on the pavement, their heads up, their tongues lolling from
their mouths, their expressions ones of detached interest.

Perhaps it was the width of the outer wall that subdued the amount of
light in the room. The chamber was circular, and directly opposite him
was a second window, the lowest of the matching diamond pattern. He took
the four-foot drop from the sill to the floor but lingered in the light
as he surveyed every inch of the room. There were no furnishings at all,
but in the very center sank a well of darkness. A smooth pillar, glowing
faintly, rose from its core. Travis' adjusting eyes noted how the light
came in small ripples--green and purple, over a foundation shade of dark
blue.

The pillar seemed rooted below and it extended up through a similar
opening in the ceiling, providing the only possible exit up or down,
save for climbing from window to window outside. Travis moved slowly to
the well. Underfoot was a smooth surface overlaid with a velvet carpet
of dust which arose in languid puffs as he walked. Here and there he
sighted prints in the dust, strange triangular wedges which he thought
might possibly have been made by the claws of birds. But there were no
other footprints. This tower had been undisturbed for a long, long time.

He came to the well and looked down. There was dark there, dark in which
the pulsations of light from the pillar shown the stronger. But that
glow did not extend beyond the edge of the well through which the thick
rod threaded. Even by close examination he could detect no break in the
smooth surface of the pillar, nothing remotely resembling hand- or
footholds. If it did serve the purpose of a staircase, there were no
treads.

At last Travis put out his hand to touch the surface of the pillar. And
then he jerked back--to no effect. There was no breaking contact between
his fingers and an unknown material which had the sleekness of polished
metal but--and the thought made him slightly queasy--the warmth and very
slight give of flesh!

He summoned all his strength to pull free and could not. Not only did
that hold grip him, but his other hand and arm were being drawn to join
the first! Inside Travis primitive fears awoke full force, and he threw
back his head, voicing a cry of panic as wild as that of a hunting
beast.

An instant later, his left palm was as tight a prisoner as his right.
And with both hands so held, his whole body was suddenly snapped
forward, off the safe foundation of the floor, tight to the pillar.

In this position he was sucked down into the well. And while unable to
free himself from the pillar, he did slip along its length easily
enough. Travis shut his eyes in an involuntary protest against this
weird form of capture, and a shiver ran through his body as he continued
to descend.

After the first shock had subsided the Apache realized that he was not
truly falling at all. Had the pillar been horizontal instead of
vertical, he would have gauged its speed that of a walk. He passed
through two more room enclosures; he must already be below the level of
the valley floor outside. And he was still a prisoner of the pillar, now
in total darkness.

His feet came down against a level surface, and he guessed he must have
reached the end. Again he pulled back, arching his shoulders in a final
desperate attempt at escape, and stumbled away as he was released.

He came up sideways against a wall and stood there panting. The light,
which might have come from the pillar but which seemed more a part of
the very air, was bright enough to reveal that he was in a corridor
running into greater dark both right and left.

Travis took two strides back to the pillar, fitted his palms once again
to its surface, with no result. This time his flesh did not adhere and
there was no possible way for him to climb that slick pole. He could
only hope that at some point the corridor would give him access to the
surface. But which way to go--?

At last he chose the right-hand path and started along it, pausing every
few steps to listen. But there was no sound except the soft pad of his
own feet. The air was fresh enough, and he thought he could detect a
faint current coming toward him from some point ahead--perhaps an exit.

Instead, he came into a room and a small gasp of astonishment was wrung
out of him. The walls were blank, covered with the same ripples of
blue-purple-green light which colored the pillar. Just before him was a
table and behind it a bench, both carved from the native yellow-red
mountain rock. And there was no exit except the doorway in which he now
stood.

Travis walked to the bench. Immovable, it was placed so that whoever sat
there must face the opposite wall of the chamber with the table before
him. And on the table was an object Travis recognized immediately from
his voyage in the alien star ship, one of the reader-viewers through
which the involuntary explorers had learned what little they knew of the
older galactic civilization.

A reader--and beside it a box of tapes. Travis touched the edge of that
box gingerly, half expecting it to crumble into nothingness. This was a
place long deserted. Stone table, bench, the towers could survive
through centuries of abandonment, but these other objects....

The substance of the reader was firm under the film of dust; there was
less dust here than had been in the upper tower chamber. Hardly knowing
why, Travis threw one leg over the bench and sat down behind the table,
the reader before him, the box of tapes just beyond his hand.

He surveyed the walls and then looked away hurriedly. The rippling
colors caught at his eyes. He had a feeling that if he watched that ebb
and flow too long, he would be captured in some subtle web of
enchantment just as the Reds' machine had caught and held the Tatars. He
turned his attention to the reader. It was, he believed, much like the
one they had used on the ship.

This room, table, bench, had all been designed with a set purpose. And
that purpose--Travis' fingers rested on the box of tapes he could not
yet bring himself to open--that purpose was to use the reader, he would
swear to that. Tapes so left must have had a great importance for those
who left them. It was as if the whole valley was a trap to channel a
stranger into this underground chamber.

Travis snapped open the box, fed the first disk into the reader, and
applied his eyes to the vision tube at its apex.

The rippling walls looked just the same when he looked up once more, but
the cramp in his muscles told Travis that time had passed--perhaps hours
instead of minutes--since he had taken out the first disk. He cupped his
hands over his eyes and tried to think clearly. There had been sheets of
meaningless symbol writing, but also there had been many clear,
three-dimensional pictures, accompanied by a singsong commentary in an
alien tongue, seemingly voiced out of thin air. He had been stuffed with
ragged bits and patches of information, to be connected only by guesses,
and some wild guesses, too. But this much he did know--these towers had
been built by the bald spacemen, and they were highly important to that
vanished stellar civilization. The information in this room, as
disjointed as it had been for him, led to a treasure trove on Topaz
greater than he had dreamed.

Travis swayed on the bench. To know so much and yet so little! If Ashe
were only here, or some other of the project technicians! A treasure
such as Pandora's box had been, peril for one who opened it and did not
understand. The Apache studied the three walls of blue-purple-green in
turn and with new attention. There were ways through those walls; he was
fairly sure he could unlock at least one of them. But not now--certainly
not now!

And there was another thing he knew: The Reds must _not_ find this. Such
a discovery on their part would not only mean the end of his own people
on Topaz, but the end of Terra as well. This could be a new and alien
Black Death spread to destroy whole nations at a time!

If he could--much as his archaeologist's training would argue against
it--he would blot out this whole valley above and below ground. But
while the Reds might possess a means of such destruction, the Apaches
did not. No, he and his people must prevent its discovery by the enemy
by doing what he had seen as necessary from the first--wiping out the
Red leaders! And that must be done before they chanced upon the towers!

Travis arose stiffly. His eyes ached, his head felt stuffed with
pictures, hints, speculations. He wanted to get out, back into the open
air where perhaps the clean winds of the heights would blow some of
this frightening half knowledge from his benumbed mind. He lurched down
the corridor, puzzled now by the problem of getting back to the window
level.

Here, before him, was the pillar. Without hope, but still obeying some
buried instinct, Travis again set his hands to its surface. There was a
tug at his cramped arms; once more his body was sucked to the pillar.
This time he was rising!

He held his breath past the first level and then relaxed. The principle
of this weird form of transportation was entirely beyond his
understanding, but as long as it worked in reverse he didn't care to
find out. He reached the windowed chamber, but the sunlight had left it;
instead, the clean cut of moon sweep lay on the dusty floor. He must
have been hours in that underground place.

Travis pulled away from the embrace of the pillar. The bar of his wooden
lance was still across the window and he ran for it. To catch the
scouting party at the pass he must hurry. The report they would make to
the clan now had to be changed radically in the face of his new
discoveries. The Apaches dared not retreat southward and withdraw from
the fight, leaving the Reds to use what treasure lay here.

As he hit the pavement below he looked about for the coyotes. Then he
tried the mind call. But as mysteriously as they had met him in the
valley, so now were they gone again. And Travis had no time to hunt for
them. With a sigh, he began his race to the pass.

In the old days, Travis remembered, Apache warriors had been able to
cover forty-five or fifty miles a day on foot and over rough territory.
But perhaps his modern breeding had slowed him. He had been so sure he
could catch up before the others were through the pass. But he stood now
in the hollow where they had camped, read the sign of overturned stone
and bent twig left for him, and knew they would reach the rancheria and
report the decision Deklay and the others wanted before he could head
them off.

Travis slogged on. He was so tired now that only the drug from the
sustenance tablets he mouthed at intervals kept him going at a dogged
pace, hardly more than a swift walk. And always his mind was haunted by
fragments of pictures, pictures he had seen in the reader. The big bomb
had been the nightmare of his own world for so long, and what was that
against the forces the bald star rovers had been able to command?

He fell beside a stream and slept. There was sunshine about him as he
arose to stagger on. What day was this? How long had he sat in the tower
chamber? He was not sure of time any more. He only knew that he must
reach the rancheria, tell his story, somehow win over Deklay and the
other reactionaries to prove the necessity for invading the north in
force.

A rocky point which was a familiar landmark came into focus. He padded
on, his chest heaving, his breath whistling through parched, sun-cracked
lips. He did not know that his face was now a mask of driven resolution.

"Hahhhhhh--"

The cry reached his dulled ears. Travis lifted his head, saw the men
before him and tried to think what that show of weapons turned toward
him could mean.

A stone thudded to earth only inches before his feet, to be followed by
another. He wavered to a stop.

"_Ni'ilgac_--!"

Witch? Where was a witch? Travis shook his head. There was no witch.

"_Do ne'ilka da_'!"

The old death threat, but why--for whom?

Another stone, this one hitting him in the ribs with force enough to
send him reeling back and down. He tried to get up again, saw Deklay
grin widely and take aim--and at last Travis realized what was
happening.

Then there was a bursting pain in his head and he was falling--falling
into a well of black, this time with no pillar of blue to guide him.


13


The rasp of something wet and rough, persistent against his cheek;
Travis tried to turn his head to avoid the contact and was answered by a
burst of pain which trailed off into a giddiness, making him fear
another move, no matter how minor. He opened his eyes and saw the
pointed ears, the outline of a coyote head between him and a dull gray
sky, was able to recognize Nalik'ideyu.

A wetness other than that from the coyote's tongue slid down his
forehead now. The dull clouds overhead had released the first heavy rain
Travis had experienced since their landing on Topaz. He shivered as the
chill damp of his clothes made him aware that he must have been lying
out in the full force of the downpour for some time.

It was a struggle to get to his knees, but Nalik'ideyu mouthed a hold on
his shirt, tugging and pulling so that somehow he crept into a hollow
beneath the branches of a tree where the spouting water was lessened to
a few pattering drops.

There the Apache's strength deserted him again and he could only hunch
over, his bent knees against his chest, trying to endure the throbbing
misery in his head, the awful floating sensation which followed any
movement. Fighting against that, he tried to remember just what had
happened.

The meeting with Deklay and at least four or five others ... then the
Apache accusation of witchcraft, a serious thing in the old days. Old
days! To Deklay and his fellows, these _were_ the old days! And the
threat that Deklay or some other had shouted at him--"_Do ne'ilka
da'_"--meant literally: "It won't dawn for you--death!"

Stones, the last thing Travis remembered were the stones. Slowly his
hands went out to explore his body. There was more than one bruised area
on his shoulders and ribs, even on his thighs. He must still have been a
target after he had fallen under the stone which had knocked him
unconscious. Stoned ... outlawed! But why? Surely Deklay's hostility
could not have swept Buck, Jil-Lee, Tsoay, even Nolan, into agreeing to
that? Now he could not think straight.

Travis became aware of warmth, not only of warmth and the soft touch of
a furred body by his side, but a comforting communication of mind, a
feeling he had no words to describe adequately. Nalik'ideyu was sitting
crowded against him, her nose thrust up to rest on his shoulder. She
breathed in soft puffs which stirred the loose locks of his rain-damp
hair. And now he flung one arm about her, a gesture which brought a
whisper of answering whine.

He was past wondering about the actions of the coyotes, only supremely
thankful for Nalik'ideyu's present companionship. And a moment later
when her mate squeezed under the low loop of a branch and joined them
in this natural wickiup, Travis held out his other hand, drew it
lovingly across Naginlta's wet hide.

"Now what?" he asked aloud. Deklay could only have taken such a drastic
action with the majority of the clan solidly behind him. It could well
be that this reactionary was the new chief, this act of Travis'
expulsion merely adding to Deklay's growing prestige.

The shivering which had begun when Travis recovered consciousness, still
shook him at intervals. Back on Terra, like all the others in the team,
he had had every inoculation known to the space physicians, including
several experimental ones. But the cold virus could still practically
immobilize a man, and this was no time to give body room to chills and
fever.

Catching his breath as his movements touched to life the pain in one
bruise after another, Travis peeled off his soaked clothing, rubbed his
body dry with handfuls of last year's leaves culled from the thick
carpet under him, knowing there was nothing he could do until the
whirling in his head disappeared. So he burrowed into the leaves until
only his head was uncovered, and tried to sleep, the coyotes curling up
one on either side of his nest.

He dreamed but later could not remember any incident from those dreams,
save a certain frustration and fear. When he awoke, again to the sound
of steady rain, it was dark. He reached out--both coyotes were gone. His
head was clearer and suddenly he knew what must be done. As soon as his
body was strong enough, he, too, would return to instincts and customs
of the past. This situation was desperate enough for him to challenge
Deklay.

In the dark Travis frowned. He was slightly taller, and three or four
years younger than his enemy. But Deklay had the advantage in a stouter
build and longer reach. However, Travis was sure that in his present
life Deklay had never fought a duel--Apache fashion. And an Apache duel
was not a meeting anyone entered into lightly. Travis had the right to
enter the rancheria and deliver such a challenge. Then Deklay must meet
him or admit himself in the wrong. That part of it was simple.

But in the past such duels had just one end, a fatal one for at least
one of the fighters. If Travis took this trail, he must be prepared to
go the limit. And he didn't want to kill Deklay! There were too few of
them here on Topaz to make any loss less than a real catastrophe. While
he had no liking for Deklay, neither did he nurse any hatred. However,
he must challenge the other or remain a tribal outcast; and Travis had
no right to gamble with time and the future, not after what he had
learned in the tower. It might be his life and skill, or Deklay's,
against the blotting out of them all--and their home world into the
bargain.

First, he must locate the present camp of the clan. If Nolan's arguments
had counted, they would be heading south away from the pass. And to
follow would draw him farther from the tower valley. Travis' battered
face ached as he grinned bitterly. This was another time when a man
could wish he were two people, a scout on sentry duty at the valley, the
fighter heading in the opposite direction to have it out with Deklay.
But since he was merely one man he would have to gamble on time, one of
the trickiest risks of all.

Before dawn Nalik'ideyu returned, carrying with her a bird--or at least
birds must have been somewhere in the creature's ancestry, but the
present representative of its kind had only vestigial remnants of wings,
its trailing feet and legs well developed and far more powerful.

Travis skinned the corpse, automatically putting aside some spine quills
to feather future arrows. Then he ate slivers of dusky meat raw,
throwing the bones to Nalik'ideyu.

Though he was still stiff and sore, Travis was determined to be on his
way. He tried mind contact with the coyote, picturing the Apaches,
notably Deklay, as sharply as he could by mental image. And her assent
was clear in return. She and her mate were willing to lead him to the
tribe. He gave a light sigh of relief.

As he slogged on through the depressing drizzle, the Apache wondered
again why the coyotes had left him before and waited in the tower
valley. What link was there between the animals of Terra and the remains
of the long-ago empire of the stars? For he was certain it was not by
chance that Nalik'ideyu and Naginlta had lingered in that misty place.
He longed to communicate with them directly, to ask questions and be
answered.

Without their aid, Travis would never have been able to track the clan.
The drizzle alternated with slashing bursts of rain, torrential enough
to drive the trackers to the nearest cover. Overhead the sky was either
dull bronze or night black. Even the coyotes paced nose to ground, often
making wide casts for the trail while Travis waited.

The rain lasted for three days and nights, filling watercourses with
rapidly rising streams. Travis could only hope that the others were
having the same difficulty traveling that he was, perhaps the more so
since they were burdened with packs. The fact that they kept on meant
that they were determined to get as far from the northern mountains as
they could.

On the fourth morning the bronze of the clouds slowly thinned into the
usual gold, and the sun struck across hills where mist curled like steam
from a hundred bubbling pots. Travis relaxed in the welcome warmth,
feeling his shirt dry on his shoulders. It was still a waterlogged
terrain ahead which should continue to slow the clan. He had high
expectations of catching up with them soon, and now the worst of his
bruises had faded. His muscles were limber, and he had worked out his
plan as best he could.

Two hours later he sat in ambush, waiting for the scout who was walking
into his hands. Under the direction of the coyotes, Travis had circled
the line of march, come in ahead of the clan. Now he needed an emissary
to state his challenge, and the fact that the scout he was about to jump
was Manulito, one of Deklay's supporters, suited Travis' purpose
perfectly. He gathered his feet under him as the other came opposite,
and sprang.

The rush carried Manulito off his feet and face down on the sod while
Travis made the best of his advantage and pinned the wildly fighting man
under him. Had it been one of the older braves he might not have been so
successful, but Manulito was still a boy by Apache standards.

"Lie still!" Travis ordered. "Listen well--so you can say to Deklay the
words of the Fox!"

The frenzied struggles ceased. Manulito managed to wrench his head to
the left so he could see his captor. Travis loosened his grip, got to
his feet. Manulito sat up, his face darkly sullen, but he did not reach
for his knife.

"You will say this to Deklay: The Fox says he is a man of little sense
and less courage, preferring to throw stones rather than meet knife to
knife as does a warrior. If he thinks as a warrior, let him prove
it--his strength against my strength--after the ways of the People!"

Some of the sullenness left Manulito's expression. He was eager,
excited.

"You would duel with Deklay after the old custom?"

"I would. Say this to Deklay, openly so that all men may hear. Then
Deklay must also give answer openly."

Manulito flushed at that implication concerning his leader's courage,
and Travis knew that he would deliver the challenge openly. To keep his
hold on the clan the latter must accept it, and there would be an
audience of his people to witness the success or defeat of their new
chief and his policies.

As Manulito disappeared Travis summoned the coyotes, putting full effort
into getting across one message. Any tribe led by Deklay would be
hostile to the mutant animals. They must go into hiding, run free in the
wilderness if the gamble failed Travis. Now they withdrew into the
bushes but not out of reach of his mind.

He did not have too long to wait. First came Jil-Lee, Buck, Nolan,
Tsoay, Lupe--those who had been with him on the northern scout. Then the
others, the warriors first, the women making a half circle behind,
leaving a free space in which Deklay walked.

"I am the Fox," Travis stated. "And this one has named me witch and
_natdahe_, outlaw of the mountains. Therefore do I come to name names in
my turn. Hear me, People: This Deklay--he would walk among you as
_'izesnantan_, a great chief--but he does not have the _go'ndi_, the
holy power of a chief. For this Deklay is a fool, with a head filled by
nothing but his own wishes, not caring for his clan brothers. He says he
leads you into safety; I say he leads you into the worst danger any
living man can imagine--even in peyote dreams! He is one twisted in his
thoughts, and he would make you twisted also----"

Buck cut in sharply, hushing the murmur of the massed clan.

"These are bold words, Fox. Will you back them?"

Travis' hands were already peeling off his shirt. "I will back them," he
stated between set teeth. He had known since his awakening after the
stoning that this next move was the only one left for him to make. But
now that the testing of his action came, he could not be certain of the
outcome, of anything save that the final decision of this battle might
affect more than the fate of two men. He stripped, noting that Deklay
was doing the same.

Having stepped into the center of the glade, Nolan was using the point
of his knife to score a deep-ridged circle there. Naked except for his
moccasins, with only his knife in his hand, Travis took the two strides
which put him in the circle facing Deklay. He surveyed his opponent's
finely muscled body, realizing that his earlier estimate of Deklay's
probable advantages were close to the mark. In sheer strength the other
outmatched him. Whether Deklay was skillful with his knife was another
question, one which Travis would soon be able to answer.

They circled, eyes intent upon each move, striving to weigh and measure
each other's strengths and weaknesses. Knife dueling among the
Pinda-lick-o-yi, Travis remembered, had once been an art close to
finished swordplay, with two evenly matched fighters able to engage for
a long time without seriously marking each other. But this was a far
rougher and more deadly game, with none of the niceties of such a
meeting.

He evaded a vicious thrust from Deklay.

"The bull charges," he laughed. "And the Fox snaps!" By some incredible
stroke of good fortune, the point of his weapon actually grazed Deklay's
arm, drawing a thin, red inch-long line across the skin.

"Charge again, bull. Feel once more the Fox's teeth!"

He strove to goad Deklay into a crippling loss of temper, knowing how
the other could explode into violent rage. It was dangerous, that rage,
but it could also make a man blindly careless.

There was an inarticulate sound from Deklay, a dusky swelling in the
man's face. He spat, as might an enraged puma, and rushed at Travis who
did not quite manage to avoid the lunge, falling back with a smarting
slash across the ribs.

"The bull gores!" Deklay bellowed. "Horns toss the Fox!"

He rushed again, elated by the sight of the trickling wound on Travis'
side. But the slighter man slipped away.

Travis knew he must be careful in such evasions. One foot across the
ridged circle and he was finished as much as if Deklay's blade had found
its mark. Travis tried a thrust of his own, and his foot came down hard
on a sharp pebble. Through the sole of his moccasin pain shot upward,
caused him to stumble. Again the scarlet flame of a wound, down his
shoulder and forearm this time.

Well, there was one trick, he knew. Travis tossed the knife into the
air, caught it with his left hand. Deklay was now facing a left-handed
fighter and must adjust to that.

"Paw, bull, rattle your horns!" Travis cried. "The Fox still shows his
teeth!"

Deklay recovered from his instant of surprise. With a cry which was
indeed like the bellow of an old range bull, he rushed into grapple,
sure of his superior strength against a younger and already wounded man.

Travis ducked, one knee thumping the ground. He groped out with his
right hand, caught up a handful of earth, and flung it into the dusky
brown face. Again it seemed that luck was on his side. That handful
could not be as blinding as sand, but some bit of the shower landed in
Deklay's eye.

For a space of seconds Deklay was wide open--open for a blow which would
rip him up the middle, the blow Travis could not and would not deliver.

Instead, he took the offensive recklessly, springing straight for his
opponent. As the earth-grimed fingers of one hand clawed into Deklay's
face, he struck with the other, not with the point of the knife but with
its shaft. But Deklay, already only half conscious from the blow, had
his own chance. He fell to the ground, leaving his knife behind, two
inches of steel between Travis' ribs.

Somehow--he didn't know from where he drew that strength--Travis kept
his feet and took one step and then another, out of the circle until the
comforting brace of a tree trunk was against his bare back. Was he
finished--?

He fought to nurse his rags of consciousness. Had he summoned Buck with
his eyes? Or had the urgency of what he had to say reached somehow from
mind to mind? The other was at his side, but Travis put out a hand to
ward him off.

"Towers--" He struggled to keep his wits through the pain and billowing
weakness beginning to creep through him. "Reds mustn't get to the
towers! Worse than the bomb ... end us all!"

He had a hazy glimpse of Nolan and Jil-Lee closing in about him. The
desire to cough tore at him, but they had to know, to believe....

"Reds get to the towers--everything finished. Not only here ... maybe
back home too...."

Did he read comprehension on Buck's face? Would Nolan and Jil-Lee and
the rest believe him? Travis could not suppress the cough any longer,
and the ripping pain which followed was the worst he had ever
experienced. But still he kept his feet, tried to make them understand.

"Don't let them get to the towers. Find that storehouse!"

Travis stood away from the tree, reached out to Buck his earth and
bloodstained hand. "I swear ... truth ... this must be done!"

He was going down, and he had a queer thought that once he reached the
ground everything would end, not only for him but also for his mission.
Trying to see the faces of the men about him was like attempting to
identify the people in a dream.

"Towers!" He had meant to shout it, but he could not even hear for
himself that last word as he fell.


14


Travis' back was braced against blanketed packs as he steadied a piece
of light-yellow bark against one bent knee scowling at the lines drawn
on it in faint green.

"We are here then ... and the ship there--" His thumb was set on one
point of the crude map, forefinger on the other. Buck nodded.

"That is so. Tsoay, Eskelta, Kawaykle, they watch the trails. There is
the pass, two other ways men can come on foot. But who can watch the
air?"

"The Tatars say the Reds dare not bring the 'copter into the mountains.
After they first landed they lost a flyer in a tricky air-current flow
up there. They have only one left and won't risk it. If only they aren't
reinforced before we can move!" There it was again, that constant
gnawing fear of time, time shortening into a rope to strangle them all.

"You think that the knowledge of our ship will bring them into the
open?"

"That--or information about the towers would be the only things
important enough to pull out their experts. They could send a controlled
Tatar party to explore the ship, sure. But that wouldn't give them the
technical reports they need. No, I think if they knew a wrecked Western
Confederation ship was here, it would bring them--or enough of them to
lessen the odds. We have to catch them in the open. Otherwise, they can
hole up forever in that ship-fort of theirs."

"And just how do we let them know our ship is here? Send out another
scouting party and let them be trailed back?"

"That's our last resource." Travis continued to frown at the map. Yes,
it would be possible to let the Reds sight and trail an Apache party.
But there was none in the clan who were expendable. Surely there was
some other way of laying the trap with the wrecked ship for bait.
Capture one of the Reds, let him escape again, having seen what they
wanted him to see? Again a time-wasting business. And how long would
they have to wait and what risks would they take to pick up a Red
prisoner?

"If the Tatars were dependable...." Buck was thinking aloud.

But that "if" was far too big. They could not trust the Tatars. No
matter how much the Mongols wanted to aid in pulling down the Reds, as
long as they could be controlled by the caller they were useless. Or
were they?

"Thought of something?" Buck must have caught Travis' change of
expression.

"Suppose a Tatar saw our ship and then was picked up by a Red hunting
patrol and they got the information out of him?"

"Do you think any outlaw would volunteer to let himself be picked up
again? And if he did, wouldn't the Reds also be able to learn that he
had been set up for the trap?"

"An escaped prisoner?" Travis suggested.

Now Buck was plainly considering the possibilities of such a scheme. And
Travis' own spirits rose a little. The idea was full of holes, but it
could be worked out. Suppose they capture, say, Menlik, bring him here
as a prisoner, let him think they were about to kill him because of that
attack back in the foothills. Then let him escape, pursue him northward
to a point where he could be driven into the hands of the Reds? Very
chancy, but it just might work. Travis was favoring a gamble now, since
his desperate one with the duel had paid off.

The risk he had accepted then had cost him two deep wounds, one of which
might have been serious if Jil-Lee's project-sponsored medical training
had not been to hand. But it had also made Travis one of the clan again,
with his people willing to listen to his warning concerning the tower
treasury.

"The girl--the Tatar girl!"

At first Travis did not understand Buck's ejaculation.

"We get the girl," the other elaborated, "let her escape, then hunt her
to where they'll pick her up. Might even imprison her in the ship to
begin with."

Kaydessa? Though something within him rebelled at that selection for the
leading role in their drama, Travis could see the advantage of Buck's
choice. Woman-stealing was an ancient pastime among primitive cultures.
The Tatars themselves had found wives that way in the past, just as the
Apache raiders of old had taken captive women into their wickiups. Yes,
for raiders to steal a woman would be a natural act, accepted as such
by the Reds. For the same woman to endeavor to escape and be hunted by
her captors also was reasonable. And for such a woman, cut off from her
outlaw kin, to eventually head back toward the Red settlement as the
only hope of evading her enemies--logical all the way!

"She would have to be well frightened," Travis observed with reluctance.

"That can be done for us--"

Travis glanced at Buck with sharp annoyance. He would not allow certain
games out of their common past to be played with Kaydessa. But Buck had
something very different from old-time brutality in mind.

"Three days ago, while you were still flat on your back, Deklay and I
went back to the ship--"

"Deklay?"

"You beat him openly, so he must restore his honor in his own sight. And
the council has forbidden another duel or challenge," Buck replied.
"Therefore he will continue to push for recognition in another way. And
now that he has heard your story and knows we must face the Reds, not
run from them, he is eager to take the war trail--too eager. So we
returned to the ship to make another search for weapons----"

"There were none there before except those we had...."

"Nor now either. But we discovered something else." Buck paused and
Travis was shaken out of his absorption with the problem at hand by a
note in the other's voice. It was as if Buck had come upon something he
could not summon the right words to describe.

"First," Buck continued, "there was this dead thing there, near where
we found Dr. Ruthven. It was something like a man ... but all silvery
hair----"

"The ape-things! The ape-things from the other worlds! What else did you
see?" Travis had dropped the map. His side gave him a painful twinge as
he caught at Buck's sleeve. The bald space rovers--did they still exist
here somewhere? Had they come to explore the ship built on the pattern
of their own but manned by Terrans?

"Nothing except tracks, a lot of them, in every open cabin and hole. I
think there must have been a sizable pack of the things."

"What killed the dead one?"

Buck wet his lips. "I think--fear...." His voice dropped a little,
almost apologetically, and Travis stared.

"The ship is changed. Inside, there is something wrong. When you walk
the corridors your skin crawls, you think there is something behind you.
You hear things, see things from the corners of your eyes.... When you
turn, there's nothing, nothing at all! And the higher you climb into the
ship, the worse it is. I tell you, Travis, never have I felt anything
like it before!"

"It was a ship of many dead," Travis reminded him. Had the age-old
Apache fear of the dead been activated by the Redax into an acute
phobia--to strike down such a level-headed man as Buck?

"No, at first that, too, was my thought. Then I discovered that it was
worst not near that chamber where we lay our dead, but higher, in the
Redax cabin. I think perhaps the machine is still running, but running
in a wrong way--so that it does not awaken old memories of our
ancestors now, but brings into being all the fears which have ever
haunted us through the dark of the ages. I tell you, Travis, when I came
out of that place Deklay was leading me by the hand as if I were a
child. And he was shivering as a man who will never be warm again. There
is an evil there beyond our understanding. I think that this Tatar girl,
were she only to stay there a very short time, would be well
frightened--so frightened that any trained scientist examining her later
would know there was a mystery to be explored."

"The ape-things--could they have tried to run the Redax?" Travis
wondered. To associate machines with the creatures was outwardly pure
folly. But they had been discovered on two of the planets of the old
civilization, and Ashe had thought that they might represent the
degenerate remnants of a once intelligent species.

"That is possible. If so, they raised a storm which drove them out and
killed one of them. The ship is a haunted place now."

"But for us to use the girl...." Travis had seen the logic in Buck's
first suggestion, but now he differed. If the atmosphere of the ship was
as terrifying as Buck said, to imprison Kaydessa there, even
temporarily, was still wrong.

"She need not remain long. Suppose we should do this: We shall enter
with her and then allow the disturbance we would feel to overcome us. We
could run, leave her alone. When she left the ship, we could then take
up the chase, shepherding her back to the country she knows. Within the
ship we would be with her and could see she did not remain too long."

Travis could see a good prospect in that plan. There was one thing he
would insist on--if Kaydessa was to be in that ship, he himself would be
one of the "captors." He said as much, and Buck accepted his
determination as final.

They dispatched a scouting party to infiltrate the territory to the
north, to watch and wait their chance of capture. Travis strove to
regain his feet, to be ready to move when the moment came.

Five days later he was able to reach the ridge beyond which lay the
wrecked ship. With him were Jil-Lee, Lupe, and Manulito. They satisfied
themselves that the globe had had no visitors since Buck and Deklay;
there was no sign that the ape-things had returned.

"From here," Travis said, "the ship doesn't look too bad, almost as if
it might be able to take off again."

"It might lift," Jil-Lee gestured to the mountaintop behind the curve of
the globe--"about that far. The tubes on this side are intact."

"What would happen were the Reds to get inside and try to fly again?"
Manulito wondered aloud.

Travis was struck by a sudden idea, one perhaps just as wild as the
other inspirations he had had since landing on Topaz, but one to be
studied and explored--not dismissed without consideration. Suppose
enough power remained to lift the ship partially and then blow it up?
With the Red technicians on board at the time.... But he was no
engineer, he had no idea whether any part of the globe might or might
not work again.

"They are not fools; a close look would tell them it is a wreck,"
Jil-Lee countered.

Travis walked on. Not too far ahead a yellow-brown shape moved out of
the brush, stood stiff-legged in his path, facing the ship and growling
in a harsh rumble of sound. Whatever moved or operated in that wreck was
picked up by the acute sense of the coyote, even at this distance.

"On!" Travis edged around the snarling animal. With one halting step and
then another, it followed him. There was a sharp warning yelp from the
brush, and a second coyote head appeared. Naginlta followed Travis, but
Nalik'ideyu refused to approach the grounded globe.

Travis surveyed the ship closely, trying to remember the layout of its
interior. To turn the whole sphere into a trap--was it possible? How had
Ashe said the Redax worked? Something about high-frequency waves
stimulating certain brain and nerve centers.

What if one were shielded from those rays? That tear in the side--he
himself must have climbed through that the night they crashed. And the
break was not too far from the space lock. Near the lock was a storage
compartment. And if it had not been jammed, or its contents crushed,
they might have something. He beckoned to Jil-Lee.

"Give me a hand--up there."

"Why?"

"I want to see if the space suits are intact."

Jil-Lee regarded Travis with open bewilderment, but Manulito pushed
forward. "We do not need those suits to walk here, Travis. This air we
can breathe--"

"Not for the air, and not in the open." Travis advanced at a deliberate
pace. "Those suits may be insulated in more ways than one----"

"Against a mixed-up Redax broadcast, you mean!" Jil-Lee exclaimed.
"Yes, but you stay here, younger brother. This is a risky climb, and you
are not yet strong."

Travis was forced to accede to that, waiting as Manulito and Lupe
climbed up to the tear and entered. At least Buck and Deklay's
experience had forewarned them and they would be prepared for the weird
ghosts haunting the interior.

But when they returned, pulling between them the limp space suit, both
men were pale, the shiny sheen of sweat on their foreheads, their hands
shaking. Lupe sat down on the ground before Travis.

"Evil spirits," he said, giving to this modern phenomenon the old name.
"Truly ghosts and witches walk in there."

Manulito had spread the suit on the ground and was examining it with a
care which spoke of familiarity.

"This is unharmed," he reported. "Ready to wear."

The suits were all tailored for size, Travis knew. And this fitted a
slender, medium-sized man. It would fit him, Travis Fox. But Manulito
was already unbuckling the fastenings with practiced ease.

"I shall try it out," he announced. And Travis, seeing the awkward climb
to the entrance of the ship, had to agree that the first test should be
carried out by someone more agile at the moment.

Sealed into the suit, with the bubble helmet locked in place, the Apache
climbed back into the globe. The only form of communication with him was
the rope he had tied about him, and if he went above the first level, he
would have to leave that behind.

In the first few moments they saw no twitch of alarm running along the
rope. After counting fifty slowly, Travis gave it a tentative jerk, to
find it firmly fastened within. So Manulito had tied it there and was
climbing to the control cabin.

They continued to wait with what patience they could muster. Naginlta,
pacing up and down a good distance from the ship, whined at intervals,
the warning echoed each time by his mate upslope.

"I don't like it--" Travis broke off when the helmeted figure appeared
again at the break. Moving slowly in his cumbersome clothing, Manulito
reached the ground, fumbled with the catch of his head covering and then
stood, taking deep, lung-filling gulps of air.

"Well?" Travis demanded.

"I see no ghosts," Manulito said, grinning. "This is ghost-proof!" He
slapped his gloved hand against the covering over his chest. "There is
also this--from what I know of these ships--some of the relays still
work. I think this could be made into a trap. We could entice the Reds
in and then...." His hand moved in a quick upward flip.

"But we don't know anything about the engines," Travis replied.

"No? Listen--you, Fox, are not the only one to remember useful
knowledge." Manulito had lost his cheerful grin. "Do you think we are
just the savages those big brains back at the project wished us to be?
They have played a trick on us with their Redax. So, we can play a few
tricks, too. Me--? I went to M.I.T., or is that one of the things you no
longer remember, Fox?"

Travis swallowed hastily. He really had forgotten that fact until this
very minute. From the beginning, the Apache team had been carefully
selected and screened, not only for survival potential, which was their
basic value to the project, but also for certain individual skills. Just
as Travis' grounding in archaeology had been one advantage, so had
Manulito's technical training made a valuable, though different,
contribution. If at first the Redax, used without warning, had smothered
that training, perhaps the effects were now fading.

"You can do something, then?" he asked eagerly.

"I can try. There is a chance to booby trap the control cabin at least.
And that is where they would poke and pry. Working in this suit will be
tough. How about my trying to smash up the Redax first?"

"Not until after we use it on our captive," Jil-Lee decided. "Then there
would be some time before the Reds come----"

"You talk as if they _will_ come," cut in Lupe. "How can you be sure?"

"We can't," Travis agreed. "But we can count on this much, judging from
the past. Once they know that there is a wrecked ship here, they will be
forced to explore it. They cannot afford an enemy settlement on this
side of the mountains. That would be, according to their way of
thinking, an eternal threat."

Jil-Lee nodded. "That is true. This is a complicated plan, yes, and one
in which many things may go wrong. But it is also one which covers all
the loopholes we know of."

With Lupe's aid Manulito crawled out of the suit. As he leaned it
carefully against a supporting rock he said:

"I have been thinking of this treasure house in the towers. Suppose we
could find new weapons there...."

Travis hesitated. He still shrank from the thought of opening the secret
places behind those glowing walls, to loose a new peril.

"If we took weapons from there and lost the fight...." He advanced his
first objection and was glad to see the expression of comprehension on
Jil-Lee's face.

"It would be putting the weapons straight into Red hands," the other
agreed.

"We may have to chance it before we're through," Manulito warned.
"Suppose we do get some of their technicians into this trap. That isn't
going to open up their main defense for us. We may need a bigger
nutcracker than we've ever seen."

With a return of that queasy feeling he had known in the tower, Travis
knew Manulito was speaking sense. They might have to open Pandora's box
before the end of this campaign.


15


They camped another two days near the wrecked ship while Manulito
prowled the haunted corridors and cabins in his space suit, planning his
booby trap. At night he drew diagrams on pieces of bark and discussed
the possibility of this or that device, sometimes lapsing into
technicalities his companions could not follow. But Travis was well
satisfied that Manulito knew what he was doing.

On the morning of the third day Nolan slipped into their midst. He was
dust-grimed, his face gaunt, the signs of hard travel plain to read.
Travis handed him the nearest canteen, and they watched him drink
sparingly in small sips before he spoke.

"They come ... with the girl--"

"You had trouble?" asked Jil-Lee.

"The Tatars had moved their camp, which was only wise, since the Reds
must have had a line on the other one. And they are now farther to the
west. But--" he wiped his lips with the back of his hand--"also we saw
your towers, Fox. And that is a place of power!"

"No sign that the Reds are prowling there?"

Nolan shook his head. "To my mind the mists there conceal the towers
from aerial view. Only one coming on foot could tell them from the
natural crags of the hills."

Travis relaxed. Time still granted them a margin of grace. He glanced up
to see Nolan smiling faintly.

"This maiden, she is a kin to the puma of the mountains," he announced.
"She has marked Tsoay with her claws until he looks like the ear-clipped
yearling fresh from the branding chute----"

"She is not hurt?" Travis demanded.

This time Nolan chuckled openly. "Hurt? No, we had much to do to keep
her from hurting us, younger brother. That one is truly as she claims, a
daughter of wolves. And she is also keen-witted, marking a return trail
all the way, though she does not know that is as we wish. Did we not
pick the easiest way back for just that reason? Yes, she plans to
escape."

Travis stood up. "Let us finish this quickly!" His voice came out on a
rough note. This plan had never had his full approval. Now he found it
less and less easy to think about taking Kaydessa into the ship,
allowing the emotional torment lurking there to work upon her. Yet he
knew that the girl would not be hurt, and he had made sure he would be
beside her within the globe, sharing with her the horror of the unseen.

A rattling of gravel down the narrow valley opening gave warning to
those by the campfire. Manulito had already stowed the space suit in
hiding. To Kaydessa they must have seemed reverted entirely to savagery.

Tsoay came first, an angry raking of four parallel scratches down his
left cheek. And behind him Buck and Eskelta shoved the prisoner, urging
her on with a show of roughness which did not descend to actual
brutality. Her long braids had shaken loose, and a sleeve was torn,
leaving one slender arm bare. But none of the fighting spirit had left
her.

They thrust her out into the circle of waiting men and she planted her
feet firmly apart, glaring at them all indiscriminately until she
sighted Travis. Then her anger became hotter and more deadly.

"Pig! Rooter in the dirt! Diseased camel--" she shouted at him in
English and then reverted to her own tongue, her voice riding up and
down the scale. Her hands were tied behind her back, but there were no
bonds on her tongue.

"This is one who can speak thunders, and shoot lightnings from her
mouth," Buck commented in Apache. "Put her well away from the wood, lest
she set it aflame."

Tsoay held his hands over his ears. "She can deafen a man when she
cannot set her mark on him otherwise. Let us speedily get rid of her."

Yet for all their jeering comments, their eyes held respect. Often in
the past a defiant captive who stood up boldly to his captors had
received more consideration than usual from Apache warriors; courage was
a quality they prized. A Pinda-lick-o-yi such as Tom Jeffords, who rode
into Cochise's camp and sat in the midst of his sworn enemies for a
parley, won the friendship of the very chief he had been fighting.
Kaydessa had more influence with her captors than she could dream of
holding.

Now it was time for Travis to play his part. He caught the girl's
shoulder and pushed her before him toward the wreck.

Some of the spirit seemed to have left her thin, tense body, and she
went without any more fight. Only when they came into full view of the
ship did she falter. Travis heard her breathe a gasp of surprise.

As they had planned, four of the Apaches--Jil-Lee, Tsoay, Nolan, and
Buck--fanned out toward the heights about the ship. Manulito had already
gone to cover, to don the space suit and prepare for any accident.

Resolutely Travis continued to propel Kaydessa ahead. At the moment he
did not know which was worse, to enter the ship expecting the fear to
strike, or to meet it unprepared. He was ready to refuse to enter, not
to allow the girl, sullenly plodding on under his compulsion, to face
that unseen but potent danger.

Only the memory of the towers and the threat of the Reds finding and
exploiting the treasure there kept him going. Eskelta went first,
climbing to the tear. Travis cut the ropes binding Kaydessa's wrists and
gave her a slight slap between the shoulders.

"Climb, woman!" His anxiety made that a harsh order and she climbed.

Eskelta was inside now, heading for the cabin which might reasonably be
selected as a prison. They planned to get the girl as far as that point
and then stage their act of being overcome by fear, allowing her to
escape.

Stage an act? Travis was not two feet along that corridor before he knew
that there would be little acting needed on his part. The thing which
pervaded the ship did not attack sharply, rather it seeped into his mind
and body as if he drew in poison with every breath, sent it racing
along his veins with every beat of a laboring heart. Yet he could not
put any name to his feelings, except an awful, weakening fear which
weighted him heavier with every step he took.

Kaydessa screamed. Not this time in rage, but with such fervor that
Travis lost his hold, staggered back to the wall. She whirled about, her
face contorted, and sprang at him.

It was indeed like trying to fight a wildcat and after the first second
or two he was hard put to protect his eyes, his face, his side, without
injuring her in return. She scrambled over him, running for the break in
the wall, and disappeared. Travis gasped, and started to crawl for the
break. Eskelta loomed over him, pulled him up in haste.

They reached the opening but did not climb through. Travis was uncertain
as to whether he could make that descent yet, and Eskelta was obeying
orders in not venturing out too soon.

Below, the ground was bare. There was no sign of the Apaches, though
they were in hiding there--and none of Kaydessa. Travis was amazed that
she had vanished so quickly.

Still uneasy from the emanation within, they perched within the shadow
of the break until Travis thought that the fugitive had a good
five-minute start. Then he nodded a signal to Eskelta.

By the time they reached ground level Travis felt a warm wetness
spreading under his shielding palm and he knew the wound had opened. He
spoke a word or two in hot protest against that mishap, knowing it would
keep him from the trail. Kaydessa must be covered all the way back
across the pass, not only to be shepherded away from her people and
toward the plains where she could be picked up by a Red patrol, but also
to keep her from danger. And he had planned from the first to be one of
those shepherds.

Now he was about as much use as a trail-lame pony. However, he could
send deputies. He thought out his call, and Nalik'ideyu's head appeared
in a frame of bush.

"Go, both of you and run with her! Guard--!" He said the words in a
whisper, thought them with a fierce intensity as he centered his gaze on
the yellow eyes in the pointed coyote face. There was a feeling of
assent, and then the animal was gone. Travis sighed.

The Apache scouts were subtle and alert, but the coyotes could far outdo
any man. With Nalik'ideyu and Naginlta flanking her flight, Kaydessa
would be well guarded. She would probably never see her guards or know
that they were running protection for her.

"That was a good move," Jil-Lee said, coming out of concealment. "But
what have you done to yourself?" He stepped closer, pulling Travis' hand
away from his side. By the time Lupe came to report, Travis was again
wound in a strapping bandage pulled tightly about his lower ribs, and
reconciled to the fact that any trailing he would do must be well to the
rear of the first party.

"The towers," he said to Jil-Lee. "If our plan works, we can catch part
of the Reds here. But we still have their ship to take, and for that we
need help which we may find at the towers. Or at least we can be on
guard there if they return with Kaydessa on that path."

Lupe dropped down lightly from an upper ledge. He was grinning.

"That woman is one who thinks. She runs from the ship first as a rabbit
with a wolf at her heels. Then she begins to think. She climbs--" He
lifted one finger to the slope behind them. "She goes behind a rock to
watch under cover. When Fox comes from the ship with Eskelta, again she
climbs. Buck lets himself be seen, so she moves east, as we wish--"

"And now?" questioned Travis.

"She is keeping to the high ways; almost she thinks like one of the
People on the war trail. Nolan believes she will hole up for the night
somewhere above. He will make sure."

Travis licked his lips. "She has no food or water."

Jil-Lee's lips shaped a smile. "They will see that she comes upon both
as if by chance. We have planned all of this, as you know, younger
brother."

That was true. Travis knew that Kaydessa would be guided without her
knowledge by the "accidental" appearance now and then of some
pursuer--just enough to push her along.

"Then, too, she is now armed," Jil-Lee added.

"How?" demanded Travis.

"Look to your own belt, younger brother. Where is your knife?"

Startled, Travis glanced down. His sheath was empty, and he had not
needed that blade since he had drawn it to cut meat at the morning meal.
Lupe laughed.

"She had steel in her hand when she came out of that ghost ship."

"Took it from me while we struggled!" Travis was openly surprised. He
had considered the frenzy displayed by the Tatar girl as an outburst of
almost mindless terror. Yet Kaydessa had had wit enough to take his
knife! Could this be another case where one race was less affected by a
mind machine than the other? Just as the Apaches had not been governed
by the Red caller, so the Tatars might not be as sensitive to the Redax.

"She is a strong one, that woman--one worth many ponies." Eskelta
reverted to the old measure of a wife's value.

"That is true!" Travis agreed emphatically and then was annoyed at the
broadening of Jil-Lee's smile. Abruptly he changed the subject.

"Manulito is setting the booby trap in the ship."

"That is well. He and Eskelta will remain here, and you with them."

"Not so! We must go to the towers----" Travis protested.

"I thought," Jil-Lee cut in, "that you believed the weapons of the old
ones too dangerous for us to use."

"Maybe they will be forced into our hands. But we must be sure the
towers are not entered by the Reds on their way here."

"That is reasonable. But for you, younger brother, no trailing today,
perhaps not tomorrow. If that wound opens again, you might have much bad
trouble."

Travis was forced to accept that, in spite of his worry and impatience.
And the next day when he did move on he had only the report that
Kaydessa had sheltered beside a pool for the night and was doggedly
moving back across the mountains.

Three days later Travis, Jil-Lee, and Buck came into the tower valley.
Kaydessa was in the northern foothills, twice turned back from the west
and the freedom of the outlaws by the Apache scouts. And only half an
hour before, Tsoay had reported by mirror what should have been welcome
news: the Red helicopter was cruising as it had on the day they watched
the hunters enter the uplands. There was an excellent chance of the
fugitive's being sighted and picked up soon.

Tsoay had also spotted a party of three Tatars watching the helicopter.
But after one wide sweep of the flyer they had taken to their ponies and
ridden away at the fastest pace their mounts could manage in this rough
territory.

On a stretch of smooth earth Buck scratched a trail, and they studied
it. The Reds would have to follow this route to seek the wrecked ship--a
route covered by Apache sentinels. And following the chain of
communication the result of the trap would be reported to the party at
the towers.

The waiting was the most difficult; too many imponderables did not allow
for unemotional thinking. Travis was down to the last shred of patience
when word came on the second morning at the hidden valley that Kaydessa
had been picked up by a Red patrol--drawn out to meet them by the
caller.

"Now--the tower weapons!" Buck answered the report with an imperative
order to Travis. And the other knew he could no longer postpone the
inevitable. And only by action could he blot out the haunting mental
picture of Kaydessa once more drawn into the bondage she so hated.

Flanked by Jil-Lee and Buck, he climbed back through the tower window
and faced the glowing pillar.

He crossed the room, put out both hands to the sleek pole, uncertain if
the weird transport would work again. He heard the sharp gasp from the
others as his body was sucked against the pillar and carried downward
through the well. Buck followed him, and Jil-Lee came last. Then Travis
led the way along the underground corridor to the room with the table
and the reader.

He sat down on the bench, fumbled with the pile of tape disks, knowing
that the other two were watching him with almost hostile intentness. He
snapped a disk into the reader, hoping he could correctly interpret the
directions it gave.

He looked up at the wall before him. Three ... four steps, the correct
move--and then an unlocking....

"You know?" Buck demanded.

"I can guess----"

"Well?" Jil-Lee moved to the table. "What do we do?"

"This--" Travis came from behind the table, walked to the wall. He put
out both hands, flattened his palms against the green-blue-purple
surface and slid them slowly along. Under his touch, the material of the
wall was cool and hard, unlike the live feel the pillar had. Cool
until--

One palm, held at arm's length had found the right spot. He slid the
other hand along in the opposite direction until his arms were level
with his shoulders. His fingers were able now to press on those points
of warmth. Travis tensed and pushed hard with all ten fingers.


16


At first, as one second and then two passed and there was no response to
the pressure, Travis thought he had mistaken the reading of the tape.
Then, directly before his eyes, a dark line cut vertically down the
wall. He applied more pressure until his fingers were half numb with
effort. The line widened slowly. Finally he faced a slit some eight feet
in height, a little more than two in width, and there the opening
remained.

Light beyond, a cold, gray gleam--like that of a cloudy winter day on
Terra--and with it the chill of air out of some arctic wasteland.
Favoring his still bandaged side, Travis scraped through the door ahead
of the others, and came into the place of gray cold.

"Wauggh!" Travis heard that exclamation from Jil-Lee, could have echoed
it himself except that he was too astounded by what he had seen to say
anything at all.

The light came from a grid of bars set far above their heads into the
native rock which roofed this storehouse, for storehouse it was. There
were orderly lines of boxes, some large enough to contain a tank, others
no bigger than a man's fist. Symbols in the same blue-green-purple
lights of the outer wall shone from their sides.

"What--?" Buck began one question and then changed it to another: "Where
do we begin to look?"

"Toward the far end." Travis started down the center aisle between rows
of the massed spoils of another time and world--or worlds. The same tape
which had given him the clue to the unlocking of the door, emphasized
the importance of something stored at the far end, an object or objects
which must be used first. He had wondered about that tape. A sensation
of urgency, almost of despair, had come through the gabble of alien
words, the quick sequence of diagrams and pictures. The message might
have been taped under a threat of some great peril.

There was no dust on the rows of boxes or on the floor underfoot. A
current of cold, fresh air blew at intervals down the length of the huge
chamber. They could not see the next aisle across the barriers of stored
goods, but the only noise was a whisper and the faint sounds of their
own feet. They came out into an open space backed by the wall, and
Travis saw what had been so important.

"No!" His protest was involuntary, but his denial loud enough to echo.

Six--six of them--tall, narrow cases set upright against the wall; and
from their depths, five pairs of dark eyes staring back at him in cold
measurement. These were the men of the ships--the men Menlik had dreamed
of--their bald white heads, their thin bodies with the skintight
covering of the familiar blue-green-purple. Five of them were here,
alive--watching ... waiting....

Five men--and six boxes. That small fact broke the spell in which those
eyes held Travis. He looked again at the sixth box to his right.
Expecting to meet another pair of eyes this time, he was disconcerted to
face only emptiness. Then, as his gaze traveled downward, he saw what
lay on the floor there--a skull, a tangle of bones, tattered material
cobwebbed into dusty rags by time. Whatever had preserved five of the
star men intact, had failed the sixth of their company.

"They are alive!" Jil-Lee whispered.

"I do not think so," Buck answered. Travis took another step, reached
out to touch the transparent front of the nearest coffin case. There was
no change in the eyes of the alien who stood within, no indication that
if the Apaches could see him, he would be able to return their interest.
The five stares which had bemused the visitors at first, did not break
to follow their movements.

But Travis knew! Whether it was some message on the tape which the sight
of the sleepers made clear, or whether some residue of the driving
purpose which had set them there now reached his mind, was immaterial.
He knew the purpose of this room and its contents, why it had been made
and the reason its six guardians had been left as prisoners--and what
they wanted from anyone coming after them.

"They sleep," he said softly.

"Sleep?" Buck caught him up.

"They sleep in something like deep freeze."

"Do you mean they can be brought to life again!" Jil-Lee cried.

"Maybe not now--it must be too long--but they were meant to wait out a
period and be restored."

"How do you know that?" Buck asked.

"I don't know for certain, but I think I understand a little. Something
happened a long time ago. Maybe it was a war, a war between whole star
systems, bigger and worse than anything we can imagine. I think this
planet was an outpost, and when the supply ships didn't come any more,
when they knew they might be cut off for some length of time, they
closed down. Stacked their supplies and machines here and then went to
sleep to wait for their rescuers...."

"For rescuers who never came," Jil-Lee said softly. "And there is a
chance they could be revived even now?"

Travis shivered. "Not one I would want to take."

"No," Buck's tone was somber, "that I agree to, younger brother. These
are not men as we know them, and I do not think they would be good
_dalaanbiyat'i_--allies. They had _go'ndi_ in plenty, these star men,
but it is not the power of the People. No one but a madman or a fool
would try to disturb this sleep of theirs."

"The truth you speak," Jil-Lee agreed. "But where in this," he turned
his shoulder to the sleeping star men and looked back at the filled
chamber--"do we find anything which will serve us here and now?"

Again Travis had only the scrappiest information to draw upon. "Spread
out," he told them. "Look for the marking of a circle surrounding four
dots set in a diamond pattern."

They went, but Travis lingered for a moment to look once more into the
bleak and bitter eyes of the star men. How many planet years ago had
they sealed themselves into those boxes? A thousand, ten thousand? Their
empire was long gone, yet here was an outpost still waiting to be
revived to carry on its mysterious duties. It was as if in Saxon-invaded
Britain long ago a Roman garrison had been frozen to await the return of
the legions. Buck was right; there was no common ground today between
Terran man and these unknowns. They must continue to sleep undisturbed.

Yet when Travis also turned away and went back down the aisle, he was
still aware of a persistent pull on him to return. It was as though
those eyes had set locking cords to will him back to release the
sleepers. He was glad to turn a corner, to know that they could no
longer watch him plunder their treasury.

"Here!" That was Buck's voice, but it echoed so oddly across the big
chamber that Travis had difficulty in deciding what part of the
warehouse it was coming from. And Buck had to call several times before
Travis and Jil-Lee joined him.

There was the circle-dot-diamond symbol shining on the side of a case.
They worked it out of the pile, setting it in the open. Travis knelt to
run his hands along the top. The container was an unknown alloy, tough,
unmarked by the years--perhaps indestructible.

Again his fingers located what his eyes could not detect--the
impressions on the edge, oddly shaped impressions into which his finger
tips did not fit too comfortably. He pressed, bearing down with the full
strength of his arms and shoulders, and then lifted up the lid.

The Apaches looked into a set of compartments, each holding an object
with a barrel, a hand grip, a general resemblance to the sidearms of
their own world and time, but sufficiently different to point up the
essential strangeness. With infinite care Travis worked one out of the
vise-support which held it. The weapon was light in weight, lighter than
any automatic he had ever held. Its barrel was long, a good eighteen
inches--the grip alien in shape so that it didn't fit comfortably into
his hand, the trigger nonexistent, but in its place a button on the
lower part of the barrel which could be covered by an outstretched
finger.

"What does it do?" asked Buck practically.

"I'm not sure. But it is important enough to have a special mention on
the tape." Travis passed the weapon along to Buck and worked another
loose from its holder.

"No way of loading I can see," Buck said, examining the weapon with care
and caution.

"I don't think it fires a solid projectile," Travis replied. "We'll have
to test them outside to find out just what we do have."

The Apaches took only three of the weapons, closing the box before they
left. And as they wriggled back through the crack door, Travis was
visited again by that odd flash of compelling, almost possessive power
he had experienced when they had lain in ambush for the Red hunting
party. He took a step or two forward until he was able to catch the edge
of the reading table and steady himself against it.

"What is the matter?" Both Buck and Jil-Lee were watching him;
apparently neither had felt that sensation. Travis did not reply for a
second. He was free of it now. But he was sure of its source; it had not
been any backlash of the Red caller! It was rooted here--a compulsion
triggered to make the original intentions of the outpost obeyed, a last
drag from the sleepers. This place had been set up with a single
purpose: to protect and preserve the ancient rulers of Topaz. And
perhaps the very presence here of the intruding Terrans had released a
force, started an unseen installation.

Now Travis answered simply: "They want out...."

Jil-Lee glanced back at the slit door, but Buck still watched Travis.

"They call?" he asked.

"In a way," Travis admitted. But the compulsion had already ebbed; he
was free. "It is gone now."

"This is not a good place," Buck observed somberly. "We touch that which
should not be held by men of our earth." He held out the weapon.

"Did not the People take up the rifles of the Pinda-lick-o-yi for their
defense when it was necessary?" Jil-Lee demanded. "We do what we must.
After seeing that," his chin indicated the slit and what lay behind
it--"do you wish the Reds to forage here?"

"Still," Buck's words came slowly, "this is a choice between two evils,
rather than between an evil and a good--"

"Then let us see how powerful this evil is!" Jil-Lee headed for the
corridor leading to the pillar.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was late afternoon when they made their way through the swirling
mists of the valley under the archway giving on the former site of the
outlaw Tatar camp. Travis sighted the long barrel of the weapon at a
small bush backed by a boulder, and he pressed the firing button. There
was no way of knowing whether the weapon was loaded except to try it.

The result of his action was quick--quick and terrifying. There was no
sound, no sign of any projectile ... ray-gas ... or whatever might have
issued in answer to his finger movement. But the bush--the bush was no
more!

A black smear made a ragged outline of the extinguished branches and
leaves on the rock which had stood behind. The earth might still enclose
roots under a thin coating of ash, but the bush was gone!

"The breath of Naye'nezyani--powerful beyond belief!" Buck broke their
horrified silence first. "In truth evil is here!"

Jil-Lee raised his gun--if gun it could be called--aimed at the rock
with the bush silhouette plain to see and fired.

This time they were able to witness disintegration in progress, the
crumble of the stone as if its substance was no more than sand lapped by
river water. A pile of blackened rubble remained--nothing more.

"To use this on a living thing?" Buck protested, horror basing the doubt
in his voice.

"We do not use it against living things," Travis promised, "but against
the ship of the Reds--to cut that to pieces. This will open the shell of
the turtle and let us at its meat."

Jil-Lee nodded. "Those are true words. But now I agree with your fears
of this place, Travis. This is a devil thing and must not be allowed to
fall into the hands of those who--"

"Will use it more freely than we plan to?" Buck wanted to know. "We
reserve to ourselves that right because we hold our motives higher? To
think that way is also a crooked trail. We will use this means because
we must, but afterward...."

Afterward that warehouse must be closed, the tapes giving the entrance
clue destroyed. One part of Travis fought that decision, right though he
knew it to be. The towers were the menace he had believed. And what was
more discouraging than the risk they now ran, was the belief that the
treasure was a poison which could not be destroyed but which might
spread from Topaz to Terra.

Suppose the Western Conference had discovered that storehouse and
explored its riches, would they have been any less eager to exploit
them? As Buck had pointed out, one's own ideals could well supply
reasons for violence. In the past Terra had been racked by wars of
religion, one fanatically held opinion opposed to another. There was no
righteousness in such struggles, only fatal ends. The Reds had no right
to this new knowledge--but neither did they. It must be locked against
the meddling of fools and zealots.

"Taboo--" Buck spoke that word with an emphasis they could appreciate.
Knowledge must be set behind the invisible barriers of taboo, and that
could work.

"These three--no more--we found no other weapons!" Jil-Lee added a
warning suggestion.

"No others," Buck agreed and Travis echoed, adding:

"We found tombs of the space people, and these were left with them.
Because of our great need we borrowed them, but they must be returned to
the dead or trouble will follow. And they may only be used against the
fortress of the Reds by us, who first found them and have taken unto
ourselves the wrath of disturbed spirits."

"Well thought! That is an answer to give the People. The towers are the
tombs of dead ones. When we return these they shall be taboo. We are
agreed?" Buck asked.

"We are agreed!"

Buck tried his weapon on a sapling, saw it vanish into nothingness. None
of the Apaches wanted to carry the strange guns against their bodies;
the power made them objects of fear, rather than arms to delight a
warrior. And when they returned to their temporary camp, they laid all
three on a blanket and covered them up. But they could not cover up the
memories of what had happened to bush, rock, and tree.

"If such are their small weapons," Buck observed that evening, "then
what kind of things did they have to balance our heavy armament? Perhaps
they were able to burn up worlds!"

"That may be what happened elsewhere," Travis replied. "We do not know
what put an end to their empire. The capital-planet we found on the
first voyage had not been destroyed, but it had been evacuated in haste.
One building had not even been stripped of its furnishings." He
remembered the battle he had fought there, he and Ross Murdock and the
winged native, standing up to an attack of the ape-things while the
winged warrior had used his physical advantage to fly above and bomb the
enemies with boxes snatched from the piles....

"And here they went to sleep in order to wait out some danger--time or
disaster--they did not believe would be permanent," Buck mused.

Travis thought he would flee from the eyes of the sleepers throughout
his dreams that night, but on the contrary he slept heavily, finding it
hard to rouse when Jil-Lee awakened him for his watch. But he was alert
when he saw a four-footed shape flit out of the shadows, drink water
from the stream, and shake itself vigorously in a spray of drops.

"Naginlta!" he greeted the coyote. Trouble? He could have shouted that
question, but he put a tight rein on his impatience and strove to
communicate in the only method possible.

No, what the coyote had come to report was not trouble but the fact that
the one he had been set to guard was headed back into the mountains,
though others came with her--four others. Nalik'ideyu still watched
their camp. Her mate had come for further orders.

Travis squatted before the animal, cupped the coyote's jowls between his
palms. Naginlta suffered his touch with only a small whine of
uneasiness. With all his power of mental suggestion, Travis strove to
reach the keen brain he knew was served by the yellow eyes looking into
his.

The others with Kaydessa were to be led on, taken to the ship. But
Kaydessa must not suffer harm. When they reached a spot near-by--Travis
thought of a certain rock beyond the pass--then one of the coyotes was
to go ahead to the ship. Let the Apaches there know....

Manulito and Eskelta should also be warned by the sentry along the
peaks, but additional alerting would not go amiss. Those four with
Kaydessa--they must reach the trap!

"What was that?" Buck rolled out of his blanket.

"Naginlta--" The coyote sped back into the dark again. "The Reds have
taken the bait, a party of at least four with Kaydessa are moving into
the foothills, heading south."

But the enemy party was not the only one on the move. In the light of
day a sentry's mirror from a point in the peaks sent another warning
down to their camp.

Out in their mountain meadows the Tatar outlaws were on horseback,
moving toward the entrance of the tower valley. Buck knelt by the
blanket covering the alien weapons.

"Now what?"

"We'll have to stop them," Travis replied, but he had no idea of just
how they would halt those determined Mongol horsemen.


17


There were ten of them riding on small, wiry steppe ponies--men and
women both, and well armed. Travis recalled it was the custom of the
Horde that the women fought as warriors when necessary. Menlik--there
was no mistaking the flapping robe of their leader. And they were
singing! The rider behind the shaman thumped with violent energy a drum
fastened beside his saddle horn, its heavy boom, boom the same call the
Apache had heard before. The Mongols were working themselves into the
mood for some desperate effort, Travis deduced. And if they were too
deeply under the Red spell, there would be no arguing with them. He
could wait no longer.

The Apache swung down from a ledge near the valley gate, moved into the
open and stood waiting, the alien weapon resting across his forearm. If
necessary, he intended to give a demonstration with it for an object
lesson.

"_Dar-u-gar_!" The war cry which had once awakened fear across a quarter
of Terra. Thin here, and from only a few throats, but just as menacing.

Two of the horsemen aimed lances, preparing to ride him down. Travis
sighted a tree midway between them and pressed the firing button. This
time there was a flash, a flicker of light, to mark the disappearance of
a living thing.

One of the lancers' ponies reared, squealed in fear. The other kept on
his course.

"Menlik!" Travis shouted. "Hold up your man! I do not want to kill!"

The shaman called out, but the lancer was already level with the
vanished tree, his head half turned on his shoulders to witness the
blackened earth where it had stood. Then he dropped his lance, sawed on
the reins. A rifle bullet might not have halted his charge, unless it
killed or wounded, but what he had just seen was a thing beyond his
understanding.

The tribesmen sat their horses, facing Travis, watching him with the
feral eyes of the wolves they claimed as forefathers, wolves that
possessed the cunning of the wild, cunning enough not to rush breakneck
into unknown danger.

Travis walked forward. "Menlik, I would talk--"

There was an outburst from the horsemen, protests from Hulagur and one
or two of the others. But the shaman urged his mount into a walking pace
toward the Apache until they stood only a few feet from each other--the
warrior of the steppes and the Horde facing the warrior of the desert
and the People.

"You have taken a woman from our yurts," Menlik said, but his eyes were
more on the alien gun than on the man who held it. "Brave are you to
come again into our land. He who sets foot in the stirrup must mount
into the saddle; he who draws blade free of the scabbard must be
prepared to use it."

"The Horde is not here--I see only a handful of people," Travis replied.
"Does Menlik propose to go up against the Apaches so? Yet there are
those who are his greater enemies."

"A stealer of women is not such a one as needs a regiment under a
general to face him."

Suddenly Travis was impatient of the ceremonious talking; there was so
little time.

"Listen, and listen well, Shaman!" He spoke curtly now. "I have not your
woman. She is already crossing the mountains southward," he pointed with
his chin--"leading the Reds into a trap."

Would Menlik believe him? There was no need, Travis decided, to tell him
now that Kaydessa's part in this affair was involuntary.

"And you?" The shaman asked the question the Apache had hoped to hear.

"_We_," Travis emphasized that, "march now against those hiding behind
in their ship out there." He indicated the northern plains.

Menlik raised his head, surveying the land about them with disbelieving,
contemptuous appraisal.

"You are chief then of an army, an army equipped with magic to overcome
machines?"

"One needs no army when he carries this." For the second time Travis
displayed the power of the weapon he carried, this time cutting into
shifting rubble an outcrop of cliff wall. Menlik's expression did not
change, though his eyes narrowed.

The shaman signaled his small company, and they dismounted. Travis was
heartened by this sign that Menlik was willing to talk. The Apache made
a similar gesture, and Jil-Lee and Buck, their own weapons well in
sight, came out to back him. Travis knew that the Tatar had no way of
knowing that the three were alone; he well might have believed an unseen
troop of Apaches were near-by and so armed.

"You would talk--then talk!" Menlik ordered.

This time Travis outlined events with an absence of word embroidery.
"Kaydessa leads the Reds into a trap we have set beyond the peaks--four
of them ride with her. How many now remain in the ship near the
settlement?"

"There are at least two in the flyer, perhaps eight more in the ship.
But there is no getting at them in there."

"No?" Travis laughed softly, shifted the weapon on his arm. "Do you not
think that this will crack the shell of that nut so that we can get at
the meat?"

Menlik's eyes flickered to the left, to the tree which was no longer a
tree but a thin deposit of ash on seared ground.

"They can control us with the caller as they did before. If we go up
against them, then we are once more gathered into their net--before we
reach their ship."

"That is true for you of the Horde; it does not affect the People,"
Travis returned. "And suppose we burn out their machines? Then will you
not be free?"

"To burn up a tree? Lightning from the skies can do that."

"Can lightning," Buck asked softly, "also make rock as sand of the
river?"

Menlik's eyes turned to the second example of the alien weapon's power.

"Give us proof that this will act against their machines!"

"What proof, Shaman?" asked Jil-Lee. "Shall we burn down a mountain that
you may believe? This is now a matter of time."

Travis had a sudden inspiration. "You say that the 'copter is out.
Suppose we use that as a target?"

"That--that can sweep the flyer from the sky?" Menlik's disbelief was
open.

Travis wondered if he had gone too far. But they needed to rid
themselves of that spying flyer before they dared to move out into the
plain. And to use the destruction of the helicopter as an example, would
be the best proof he could give of the invincibility of the new Apache
arms.

"Under the right conditions," he replied stoutly, "yes."

"And those conditions?" Menlik demanded.

"That it must be brought within range. Say, below the level of a
neighboring peak where a man may lie in wait to fire."

Silent Apaches faced silent Mongols, and Travis had a chance to taste
what might be defeat. But the helicopter must be taken before they
advanced toward the ship and the settlement.

"And, maker of traps, how do you intend to bait this one?" Menlik's
question was an open challenge.

"You know these Reds better than we," Travis counterattacked. "How would
you bait it, Son of the Blue Wolf?"

"You say Kaydessa is leading the Reds south; we have but your word for
that," Menlik replied. "Though how it would profit you to lie on such a
matter--" He shrugged. "If you do speak the truth, then the 'copter will
circle about the foothills where they entered."

"And what would bring the pilot nosing farther in?" the Apache asked.

Menlik shrugged again. "Any manner of things. The Reds have never
ventured too far south; they are suspicious of the heights--with good
cause." His fingers, near the hilt of his tulwar, twitched. "Anything
which might suggest that their party is in difficulty would bring them
in for a closer look--"

"Say a fire, with much smoke?" Jil-Lee suggested.

Menlik spoke over his shoulder to his own party. There was a babble of
answer, two or three of the men raising their voices above those of
their companions.

"If set in the right direction, yes," the shaman conceded. "When do you
plan to move, Apaches?"

"At once!"

But they did not have wings, and the cross-country march they had to
make was a rough journey on foot. Travis' "at once" stretched into night
hours filled with scrambling over rocks, and an early morning of
preparations, with always the threat that the helicopter might not
return to fly its circling mission over the scene of operations. All
they had was Menlik's assurance that while any party of the Red
overlords was away from their well-defended base, the flyer did just
that.

"Might be relaying messages on from a walkie-talkie or something like
that," Buck commented.

"They should reach our ship in two days ... three at the most ... if
they are pushing," Travis said thoughtfully. "It would be a help--if
that flyer is a link in any com unit--to destroy it before its crew
picks up and relays any report of what happens back there."

Jil-Lee grunted. He was surveying the heights above the pocket in which
Menlik and two of the Mongols were piling brush. "There ... there ...
and there...." The Apache's chin made three juts. "If the pilot swoops
for a quick look, our cross fire will take out his blades."

They held a last conference with Menlik and then climbed to the perches
Jil-Lee had selected. Sentries on lookout reported by mirror flash that
Tsoay, Deklay, Lupe, and Nolan were now on the move to join the other
three Apaches. If and when Manulito's trap closed its jaws on the Reds
at the western ship, the news would pass and the Apaches would move out
to storm the enemy fort on the prairie. And should they blast any caller
the helicopter might carry, Menlik and his riders would accompany them.

There it was, just as Menlik had foretold: The wasp from the open
country was flying into the hills. Menlik, on his knees, struck flint to
steel, sparking the fire they hoped would draw the pilot to a closer
investigation.

The brush caught, and smoke, thick and white, came first in separate
puffs and then gathered into a murky pillar to form a signal no one
could overlook. In Travis' hands the grip of the gun was slippery. He
rested the end of the barrel on the rock, curbing his rising tension as
best he could.

To escape any caller on the flyer, the Tatars had remained in the valley
below the Apaches' lookout. And as the helicopter circled in, Travis
sighted two men in its cockpit, one wearing a helmet identical to the
one they had seen on the Red hunter days ago. The Reds' long undisputed
sway over the Mongol forces would make them overconfident. Travis
thought that even if they sighted one of the waiting Apaches, they would
not take warning until too late.

Menlik's bush fire was performing well and the flyer was heading
straight for it. The machine buzzed the smoke once, too high for the
Apaches to trust raying its blades. Then the pilot came back in a lower
sweep which carried him only yards above the smoldering brush, on a
level with the snipers.

Travis pressed the button on the barrel, his target the fast-whirling
blades. Momentum carried the helicopter on, but at least one of the
marksmen, if not all three, had scored. The machine plowed through the
smoke to crack up beyond.

Was their caller working, bringing in the Mongols to aid the Reds
trapped in the wreck?

Travis watched Menlik make his way toward the machine, reach the cracked
cover of the cockpit. But in the shaman's hand was a bare blade on which
the sun glinted. The Mongol wrenched open the sprung door, thrust inward
with the tulwar, and the howl of triumph he voiced was as worldless and
wild as a wolf's.

More Mongols flooding down ... Hulagur ... a woman ... centering on the
helicopter. This time a spear plunged into the interior of the broken
flyer. Payment was being extracted for long slavery.

The Apaches dropped from the heights, waiting for Menlik to leave the
wild scene. Hulagur had dragged out the body of the helmeted man and
the Mongols were stripping off his equipment, smashing it with rocks,
still howling their war cry. But the shaman came to the dying smudge
fire to meet the Apaches.

He was smiling, his upper lip raised in a curve suggesting the victory
purr of a snow tiger. And he saluted with one hand.

"There are two who will not trap men again! We believe you now, _andas_,
comrades of battle, when you say you can go up against their fort and
make it as nothing!"

Hulagur came up behind the shaman, a modern automatic in his hand. He
tossed the weapon into the air, caught it again, laughing--disclaiming
something in his own language.

"From the serpents we take two fangs," Menlik translated. "These weapons
may not be as dangerous as yours, but they can bite deeper, quicker, and
with more force than our arrows."

It did not take the Mongols long to strip the helicopter and the Reds of
what they could use, deliberately smashing all the other equipment which
had survived the wreck. They had accomplished one important move: The
link between the southbound exploring party and the Red headquarters--if
that was the role the helicopter had played--was now gone. And the
"eyes" operating over the open territory of the plains had ceased to
exist. The attacking war party could move against the ship near the Red
settlement, knowing they had only controlled Mongol scouts to watch for.
And to penetrate enemy territory under those conditions was an old, old
game the Apaches had played for centuries.

While they waited for the signals from the peaks, a camp was established
and a Mongol dispatched to bring up the rest of the outlaws and all
extra mounts. Menlik carried to the Apaches a portion of the dried meat
which had been transported Horde fashion--under the saddle to soften it
for eating.

"We do not skulk any longer like rats or city men in dark holes," he
told them. "This time we ride, and we shall take an accounting from
those out there--a fine accounting!"

"They still have other controllers," Travis pointed out.

"And you have that which is an answer to all their machines," blazed
Menlik in return.

"They will send against us your own people if they can," Buck warned.

Menlik pulled at his upper lip. "That is also truth. But now they have
no eyes in the sky, and with so many of their men away, they will not
patrol too far from camp. I tell you, _andas_, with these weapons of
yours a man could rule a world!"

Travis looked at him bleakly. "Which is why they are taboo!"

"Taboo?" Menlik repeated. "In what manner are these forbidden? Do you
not carry them openly, use them as you wish? Are they not weapons of
your own people?"

Travis shook his head. "These are the weapons of dead men--if we can
name them men at all. These we took from a tomb of the star race who
held Topaz when our world was only a hunting ground of wild men wearing
the skins of beasts and slaying mammoths with stone spears. They are
from a tomb and are cursed, a curse we took upon ourselves with their
use."

There was a strange light deep in the shaman's eyes. Travis did not know
who or what Menlik had been before the Red conditioner had returned him
to the role of Horde shaman. He might have been a technician or
scientist--and deep within him some remnants of that training could now
be dismissing everything Travis said as fantastic superstition.

Yet in another way the Apache spoke the exact truth. There was a curse
on these weapons, on every bit of knowledge gathered in that warehouse
of the towers. As Menlik had already noted, that curse was power, the
power to control Topaz, and then perhaps to reach back across the stars
to Terra.

When the shaman spoke again his words were a half whisper. "It will take
a powerful curse to keep these out of the hands of men."

"With the Reds gone or powerless," Buck asked, "what need will anyone
have for them?"

"And if another ship comes from the skies--to begin all over again?"

"To that we shall have an answer, also, if and when we must find it,"
Travis replied. That could well be true ... other weapons in the
warehouse powerful enough to pluck a spaceship out of the sky, but they
did not have to worry about that now.

"Arms from a tomb. Yes, this is truly dead men's magic. I shall say so
to my people. When do we move out?"

"When we know whether or not the trap to the south is sprung," Buck
answered.

The report came an hour after sunrise the next morning when Tsoay,
Nolan, and Deklay padded into camp. The war chief made a slight gesture
with one hand.

"It is done?" Travis wanted confirmation in words.

"It is done. The Pinda-lick-o-yi entered the ship eagerly. Then they
blew it and themselves up. Manulito did his work well."

"And Kaydessa?"

"The woman is safe. When the Reds saw the ship, they left their machine
outside to hold her captive. That mechanical caller was easily
destroyed. She is now free and with the _mba'a_ she comes across the
mountains, Manulito and Eskelta with her also. Now--" he looked from his
own people to the Mongols, "why are you here with these?"

"We wait, but the waiting is over," Jil-Lee said. "Now we go north!"


18


They lay along the rim of a vast basin, a scooping out of earth so wide
they could not sight its other side. The bed of an ancient lake, Travis
speculated, or perhaps even the arm of a long-dried sea. But now the
hollow was filled with rolling waves of golden grass, tossing heavy
heads under the flowing touch of a breeze with the exception of a space
about a mile ahead where round domes--black, gray, brown--broke the
yellow in an irregular oval around the globular silver bead of a spacer:
a larger ship than that which had brought the Apaches, but of the same
shape.

"The horse herd ... to the west." Nolan evaluated the scene with the
eyes of an experienced raider. "Tsoay, Deklay, you take the horses!"

They nodded, and began the long crawl which would take them two miles or
more from the party to stampede the horses.

To the Mongols in those domelike yurts horses were wealth, life itself.
They would come running to investigate any disturbance among the grazing
ponies, thus clearing the path to the ship and the Reds there. Travis,
Jil-Lee, and Buck, armed with the star guns, would spearhead that
attack--cutting into the substance of the ship itself until it was a
sieve through which they could shake out the enemy. Only when the
installations it contained were destroyed, might the Apaches hope for
any assistance from the Mongols, either the outlaw pack waiting well
back on the prairie or the people in the yurts.

The grass rippled and Naginlta poked out a nose, parting stems before
Travis. The Apache beamed an order, sending the coyotes with the
horse-raiding party. He had seen how the animals could drive hunted
split-horns; they would do as well with the ponies.

Kaydessa was safe, the coyotes had made that clear by the fact that they
had joined the attacking party an hour earlier. With Eskelta and
Manulito she was on her way back to the north.

Travis supposed he should be well pleased that their reckless plan had
succeeded as well as it had. But when he thought of the Tatar girl, all
he could see was her convulsed face close to his in the ship corridor,
her raking nails raised to tear his cheek. She had an excellent reason
to hate him, yet he hoped....

They continued to watch both horse herd and domes. There were people
moving about the yurts, but no signs of life at the ship. Had the Reds
shut themselves in there, warned in some way of the two disasters which
had whittled down their forces?

"Ah--!" Nolan breathed.

One of the ponies had raised its head and was facing the direction of
the camp, suspicion plain to read in its stance. The Apaches must have
reached the point between the herd and the domes which had been their
goal. And the Mongol guard, who had been sitting cross-legged, the
reins of his mount dangling close to his hand, got to his feet.

"Ahhhuuuuu!" The ancient Apache war cry that had sounded across deserts,
canyons, and southwestern Terran plains to ice the blood, ripped just as
freezingly through the honey-hued air of Topaz.

The horses wheeled, racing upslope away from the settlement. A figure
broke from the grass, flapped his arms at one of the mounts, grabbed at
flying mane, and pulled himself up on the bare back. Only a master
horseman would have done that, but the whooping rider now drove the herd
on, assisted by the snapping and snarling coyotes.

"Deklay--" Jil-Lee identified the reckless rider, "that was one of his
rodeo tricks."

Among the yurts it was as if someone had ripped up a rotten log to
reveal an ants' nest and sent the alarmed insects into a frenzy. Men
boiled out of the domes, the majority of them running for the horse
pasture. One or two were mounted on ponies that must have been staked
out in the settlement. The main war party of Apaches skimmed silently
through the grass on their way to the ship.

The three who were armed with the alien weapons had already tested their
range by experimentation back in the hills, but the fear of exhausting
whatever powered those barrels had curtailed their target practice. Now
they snaked to the edge of the bare ground between them and the ladder
hatch of the spacer. To cross that open space was to provide targets for
lances and arrows--or the superior armament of the Reds.

"A chance we can hit from here." Buck laid his weapon across his bent
knee, steadied the long barrel of the burner, and pressed the firing
button.

The closed hatch of the ship shimmered, dissolved into a black hole.
Behind Travis someone let out the yammer of a war whoop.

"Fire--cut the walls to pieces!"

Travis did not need that order from Jil-Lee. He was already beaming
unseen destruction at the best target he could ask for--the side of the
sphere. If the globe was armed, there was no weapon which could be
depressed far enough to reach the marksmen at ground level.

Holes appeared, irregular gaps and tears in the fabric of the ship. The
Apaches were turning the side of the globe into lacework. How far those
rays penetrated into the interior they could not guess.

Movement at one of the holes, the chattering burst of machine-gun fire,
spatters of soil and gravel into their faces; they could be cut to
pieces by that! The hole enlarged, a scream ... cut off....

"They will not be too quick to try that again," Nolan observed with cold
calm from behind Travis' post.

Methodically they continued to beam the ship. It would never be
space-borne again; there were neither the skills nor materials here to
repair such damage.

"It is like laying a knife to fat," Lupe said as he crawled up beside
Travis. "Slice, slice--!"

"Move!" Travis reached to the left, pulled at Jil-Lee's shoulder.

Travis did not know whether it was possible or not, but he had a heady
vision of their combined fire power cutting the globe in half, slicing
it crosswise with the ease Lupe admired.

They scurried through cover just as someone behind yelled a warning.
Travis threw himself down, rolled into a new firing position. An arrow
sang over his head; the Reds were doing what the Apaches had known they
would--calling in the controlled Mongols to fight. The attack on the
ship must be stepped up, or the Amerindians would be forced to retreat.

Already a new lacing of holes appeared under their concentrated efforts.
With the gun held tight to his middle, Travis found his feet, zigzagged
across the bare ground for the nearest of those openings. Another arrow
clanged harmlessly against the fabric of the ship a foot from his goal.

He made it in, over jagged metal shards which glowed faintly and reeked
of ozone. The weapons' beams had penetrated well past both the outer
shell and the wall of insulation webbing. He climbed a second and
smaller break into a corridor enough like those of the western ship to
be familiar. The Red spacer, based on the general plan of the alien
derelict ship as his own had been, could not be very different.

Travis tried to subdue his heavy breathing and listen. He heard a
confused shouting and the burr of what might be an alarm system. The
ship's brain was the control cabin. Even if the Reds dared not try to
lift now, that was the core of their communication lines. He started
along the corridor, trying to figure out its orientation in relation to
that all-important nerve center.

The Apache shoved open each door he passed with one shoulder, and twice
he played a light beam on installations within cabins. He had no idea of
their use, but the wholesale destruction of each and every machine was
what good sense and logic dictated.

There was a sound behind. Travis whirled, saw Jil-Lee and beyond him
Buck.

"Up?" Jil-Lee asked.

"And down," Buck added. "The Tatars say they have hollowed a bunker
beneath."

"Separate and do as much damage as you can," Travis suggested.

"Agreed!"

Travis sped on. He passed another door and then backtracked hurriedly as
he realized it had given on to an engine room. With the gun he blasted
two long lines cutting the fittings into ragged lumps. Abruptly the
lights went out; the burr of the alarms was silenced. Part of the ship,
if not all, was dead. And now it might come to hunter and hunted in the
dark. But that was an advantage as far as the Apaches were concerned.

Back in the corridor again, Travis crept through a curiously lifeless
atmosphere. The shouting was stilled as if the sudden failure of the
machines had stunned the Reds.

A tiny sound--perhaps the scrape of a boot on a ladder. Travis edged
back into a compartment. A flash of light momentarily lighted the
corridor; the approaching figure was using a torch. Travis drew his
knife with one hand, reversed it so he could use the heavy hilt as a
silencer. The other was hurrying now, on his way to investigate the
burned-out engine cabin. Travis could hear the rasp of his fast
breathing. Now!

The Apache had put down the gun, his left arm closed about a shoulder,
and the Red gasped as Travis struck with the knife hilt. Not clean--he
had to hit a second time before the struggles of the man were over.
Then, using his hands for eyes, he stripped the limp body on the floor
of automatic and torch.

With the Red's weapon in the front of his sash, the burner in one hand
and the torch in the other, Travis prowled on. There was a good chance
that those above might believe him to be their comrade returning. He
found the ladder leading to the next level, began to climb, pausing now
and then to listen.

Shock preceded sound. Under him the ladder swayed and the globe itself
rocked a little. A blast of some kind must have been set off at or under
the level of the ground. The bunker Buck had mentioned?

Travis clung to the ladder, waited for the vibrations to subside. There
was a shouting above, a questioning.... Hurriedly he ascended to the
next level, scrambled out and away from the ladder just in time to avoid
the light from another torch flashed down the well. Again that call of
inquiry, then a shot--the boom of the explosion loud in the confined
space.

To climb into the face of that light with a waiting marksman above was
sheer folly. Could there be another way up? Travis retreated down one of
the corridors raying out from the ladder well. A quick inspection of the
cabins along that route told him he had reached a section of living
quarters. The pattern was familiar; the control cabin would be on the
next level.

Suddenly the Apache remembered something: On each level there should be
an emergency opening giving access to the insulation space between the
inner and outer skins of the ship through which repairs could be made.
If he could find that and climb up to the next level....

The light shining down the well remained steady, and there was the
echoing crack of another shot. But Travis was far enough away from the
ladder now to dare use his own torch, seeking the door he needed on the
wall surface. With a leap of heart he sighted the outline--his luck was
in! The Russian and western ships were alike.

Once the panel was open he flashed his torch up, finding the climbing
rungs and, above, the shadow outline of the next level opening. Securing
the alien gun in his sash beside the automatic and holding the torch in
his mouth, Travis climbed, not daring to think of the deep drop below.
Four ... five ... ten rungs, and he could reach the other door.

His fingers slid over it, searching for the release catch. But there was
no answering give. Balling his fist, he struck down at an awkward angle
and almost lost his balance as the panel fell away beneath his blow. The
door swung and he pulled through.

Darkness! Travis snapped on the torch for an instant, saw about him the
relays of a com system, and gave it a full spraying as he pivoted,
destroying the eyes and ears of the ship--unless the burnout he had
effected below had already done that. A flash of automatic fire from his
left, a searing burn along his arm an inch or so below the shoulder--

Travis' action was purely reflex. He swung the burner around, even as
his mind gave a frantic No! To defend himself with automatic, knife,
arrow--yes; but not this way. He huddled against the wall.

An instant earlier there had been a man there, a living, breathing
man--one of his own species, if not of his own beliefs. Then because his
own muscles had unconsciously obeyed warrior training, there was this.
So easy--to deal death without really meaning to. The weapon in his
hands was truly the devil gift they were right to fear. Such weapons
were not to be put into the hands of men--any men--no matter how well
intentioned.

Travis gulped in great mouthfuls of air. He wanted to throw the burner
away, hurl it from him. But the task he could rightfully use it for was
not yet done.

Somehow he reeled on into the control cabin to render the ship truly a
dead thing and free himself of the heavy burden of guilt and terror
between his hands. That weight could be laid aside; memory could not.
And no one of his kind must ever have to carry such memories again.

       *       *       *       *       *

The booming of the drums was like a pulse quickening the blood to a
rhythm which bit at the brain, made a man's eyes shine, his muscles
tense as if he held an arrow to bow cord or arched his fingers about a
knife hilt. A fire blazed high and in its light men leaped and whirled
in a mad dance with tulwar blades catching and reflecting the red gleam
of flames. Mad, wild, the Mongols were drunk with victory and freedom.
Beyond them, the silver globe of the ship showed the black holes of its
death, which was also the death of the past--for all of them.

"What now?" Menlik, the dangling of amulets and charms tinkling as he
moved, came up to Travis. There was none of the wild fervor in the
shaman's face; instead, it was as if he had taken several strides out of
the life of the Horde, was emerging into another person, and the
question he asked was one they all shared.

Travis felt drained, flattened. They had achieved their purpose. The
handful of Red overlords were dead, their machines burned out. There
were no controls here any more; men were free in mind and body. What
were they to do with that freedom?

"First," the Apache spoke his own thoughts--"we must return these."

The three alien weapons were lashed into a square of Mongol fabric,
hidden from sight, although they could not be so easily shut out of
mind. Only a few of the others, Apache or Mongol, had seen them; and
they must be returned before their power was generally known.

"I wonder if in days to come," Buck mused, "they will not say that we
pulled lightning out of the sky, as did the Thunder Slayer, to aid us.
But this is right. We must return them and make that valley and what it
holds taboo."

"And what if another ship comes--one of _yours_?" Menlik asked shrewdly.

Travis stared beyond the Tatar shaman to the men about the fire. His
nightmare dragged into the open.... What if a ship did come in, one with
Ashe, Murdock, men he knew and liked, friends on board? What then of his
guardianship of the towers and their knowledge? Could he be as sure of
what to do then? He rubbed his hand across his forehead and said slowly:

"We shall take steps when--or if--that happens--"

But could they, would they? He began to hope fiercely that it would not
happen, at least in his lifetime, and then felt the cold bleakness of
the exile they must will themselves into.

"Whether we like it or not," (was he talking to the others or trying to
argue down his own rebellion?) "we cannot let what lies under the towers
be known ... found ... used ... unless by men who are wiser and more
controlled than we are in our time."

Menlik drew his shaman's wand, twiddled it between his fingers, and
beneath his drooping lids watched the three Apaches with a new kind of
measurement.

"Then I say to you this: Such a guardianship must be a double charge,
shared by my people as well. For if they suspect that you alone control
these powers and their secret, there will be envy, hatred, fear, a
division between us from the first--war ... raids.... This is a large
land and neither of our groups numbers many. Shall we split apart
fatally from this day when there is room for all? If these ancient
things are evil, then let us both guard them with a common taboo."

He was right, of course. And they would have to face the truth squarely.
To both Apache and Mongol any off-world ship, no matter from which side,
would be a menace. Here was where they would remain and set roots. The
sooner they began thinking of themselves as people with a common bond,
the better it would be. And Menlik's suggestion provided a tie.

"You speak well," Buck was saying. "This shall be a thing we share. We
are three who know. Do you be three also, but choose well, Menlik!"

"Be assured that I will!" the Tatar returned. "We start a new life here;
there is no going back. But as I have said: The land is wide. We have no
quarrel with one another, and perhaps our two peoples shall become one;
after all, we do not differ too greatly...." He smiled and gestured to
the fire and the dancers.

Among the Mongols another man had gone into action, his head thrown back
as he leaped and twirled, voicing a deep war cry. Travis recognized
Deklay. Apache, Mongol--both raiders, horsemen, hunters, fighters when
the need arose. No, there was no great difference. Both had been tricked
into coming here, and they had no allegiance now for those who had sent
them.

Perhaps clan and Horde would combine or perhaps they would drift
apart--time would tell. But there would be the bond of the guardianship,
the determination that what slept in the towers would not be roused--in
their lifetime or many lifetimes!

Travis smiled a bit crookedly. A new religion of sorts, a priesthood
with sacred and forbidden knowledge ... in time a whole new life and
civilization stemming from this night. The bleak cold of his early
thought cut less deep. There was a different kind of adventure here.

He reached out and gathered up the bundle of the burners, glancing from
Buck to Jil-Lee to Menlik. Then he stood up, the weight of the burden in
his arms, the feeling of a greater weight inside him.

"Shall we go?"

To get the weapons back--that was of first importance. Maybe then he
could sleep soundly, to dream of riding across the Arizona range at dawn
under a blue sky with a wind in his face, a wind carrying the scent of
piñon pine and sage, a wind which would never caress or hearten him
again, a wind his sons and sons' sons would never know. To dream
troubled dreams, and hope in time those dreams would fade and thin--that
a new world would blanket out the old. Better so, Travis told himself
with defiance and determination--better so! 

###################################
Label: 1
Number of texts in this cluster: 72 

Sample text: 19
CHAPTER I. Mrs. Rachel Lynde is Surprised


|MRS. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down
into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and
traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the
old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook
in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool
and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet,
well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs.
Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it
probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window,
keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children
up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never
rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

There are plenty of people in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend
closely to their neighbor’s business by dint of neglecting their own;
but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage
their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a
notable housewife; her work was always done and well done; she “ran” the
Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop
of the Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all
this Mrs. Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen
window, knitting “cotton warp” quilts--she had knitted sixteen of them,
as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices--and keeping
a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up
the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular
peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence with water on two
sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that
hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel’s all-seeing
eye.

She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in
at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house
was in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of
bees. Thomas Lynde--a meek little man whom Avonlea people called “Rachel
Lynde’s husband”--was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field
beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on
the big red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew
that he ought because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening
before in William J. Blair’s store over at Carmody that he meant to sow
his turnip seed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him, of course, for
Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about
anything in his whole life.

And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three on the afternoon
of a busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill;
moreover, he wore a white collar and his best suit of clothes, which was
plain proof that he was going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy
and the sorrel mare, which betokened that he was going a considerable
distance. Now, where was Matthew Cuthbert going and why was he going
there?

Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel, deftly putting this
and that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both
questions. But Matthew so rarely went from home that it must be
something pressing and unusual which was taking him; he was the shyest
man alive and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place where
he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with a white collar and
driving in a buggy, was something that didn’t happen often. Mrs. Rachel,
ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her afternoon’s
enjoyment was spoiled.

“I’ll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from Marilla
where he’s gone and why,” the worthy woman finally concluded. “He
doesn’t generally go to town this time of year and he _never_ visits; if
he’d run out of turnip seed he wouldn’t dress up and take the buggy to
go for more; he wasn’t driving fast enough to be going for a doctor.
Yet something must have happened since last night to start him off. I’m
clean puzzled, that’s what, and I won’t know a minute’s peace of mind or
conscience until I know what has taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea
today.”

Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not far to go; the
big, rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a
scant quarter of a mile up the road from Lynde’s Hollow. To be sure, the
long lane made it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert’s father, as
shy and silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he possibly
could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the woods
when he founded his homestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest
edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visible
from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so
sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in such a place
_living_ at all.

“It’s just _staying_, that’s what,” she said as she stepped along the
deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. “It’s no wonder
Matthew and Marilla are both a little odd, living away back here by
themselves. Trees aren’t much company, though dear knows if they were
there’d be enough of them. I’d ruther look at people. To be sure, they
seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they’re used to it. A body
can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said.”

With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into the backyard of Green
Gables. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about on one
side with great patriarchal willows and the other with prim Lombardies.
Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel would have
seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion that Marilla
Cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she swept her house. One could
have eaten a meal off the ground without over-brimming the proverbial
peck of dirt.

Mrs. Rachel rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped in
when bidden to do so. The kitchen at Green Gables was a cheerful
apartment--or would have been cheerful if it had not been so painfully
clean as to give it something of the appearance of an unused parlor. Its
windows looked east and west; through the west one, looking out on
the back yard, came a flood of mellow June sunlight; but the east one,
whence you got a glimpse of the bloom white cherry-trees in the left
orchard and nodding, slender birches down in the hollow by the brook,
was greened over by a tangle of vines. Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, when
she sat at all, always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to
her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to
be taken seriously; and here she sat now, knitting, and the table behind
her was laid for supper.

Mrs. Rachel, before she had fairly closed the door, had taken a mental
note of everything that was on that table. There were three plates laid,
so that Marilla must be expecting some one home with Matthew to tea; but
the dishes were everyday dishes and there was only crab-apple preserves
and one kind of cake, so that the expected company could not be any
particular company. Yet what of Matthew’s white collar and the sorrel
mare? Mrs. Rachel was getting fairly dizzy with this unusual mystery
about quiet, unmysterious Green Gables.

“Good evening, Rachel,” Marilla said briskly. “This is a real fine
evening, isn’t it? Won’t you sit down? How are all your folks?”

Something that for lack of any other name might be called friendship
existed and always had existed between Marilla Cuthbert and Mrs. Rachel,
in spite of--or perhaps because of--their dissimilarity.

Marilla was a tall, thin woman, with angles and without curves; her dark
hair showed some gray streaks and was always twisted up in a hard little
knot behind with two wire hairpins stuck aggressively through it. She
looked like a woman of narrow experience and rigid conscience, which she
was; but there was a saving something about her mouth which, if it had
been ever so slightly developed, might have been considered indicative
of a sense of humor.

“We’re all pretty well,” said Mrs. Rachel. “I was kind of afraid _you_
weren’t, though, when I saw Matthew starting off today. I thought maybe
he was going to the doctor’s.”

Marilla’s lips twitched understandingly. She had expected Mrs.
Rachel up; she had known that the sight of Matthew jaunting off so
unaccountably would be too much for her neighbor’s curiosity.

“Oh, no, I’m quite well although I had a bad headache yesterday,” she
said. “Matthew went to Bright River. We’re getting a little boy from an
orphan asylum in Nova Scotia and he’s coming on the train tonight.”

If Marilla had said that Matthew had gone to Bright River to meet a
kangaroo from Australia Mrs. Rachel could not have been more astonished.
She was actually stricken dumb for five seconds. It was unsupposable
that Marilla was making fun of her, but Mrs. Rachel was almost forced to
suppose it.

“Are you in earnest, Marilla?” she demanded when voice returned to her.

“Yes, of course,” said Marilla, as if getting boys from orphan asylums
in Nova Scotia were part of the usual spring work on any well-regulated
Avonlea farm instead of being an unheard of innovation.

Mrs. Rachel felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She thought
in exclamation points. A boy! Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of all people
adopting a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly
turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after this!
Nothing!

“What on earth put such a notion into your head?” she demanded
disapprovingly.

This had been done without her advice being asked, and must perforce be
disapproved.

“Well, we’ve been thinking about it for some time--all winter in fact,”
 returned Marilla. “Mrs. Alexander Spencer was up here one day before
Christmas and she said she was going to get a little girl from the
asylum over in Hopeton in the spring. Her cousin lives there and Mrs.
Spencer has visited here and knows all about it. So Matthew and I have
talked it over off and on ever since. We thought we’d get a boy. Matthew
is getting up in years, you know--he’s sixty--and he isn’t so spry as he
once was. His heart troubles him a good deal. And you know how desperate
hard it’s got to be to get hired help. There’s never anybody to be had
but those stupid, half-grown little French boys; and as soon as you do
get one broke into your ways and taught something he’s up and off to the
lobster canneries or the States. At first Matthew suggested getting a
Home boy. But I said ‘no’ flat to that. ‘They may be all right--I’m not
saying they’re not--but no London street Arabs for me,’ I said. ‘Give
me a native born at least. There’ll be a risk, no matter who we get. But
I’ll feel easier in my mind and sleep sounder at nights if we get a born
Canadian.’ So in the end we decided to ask Mrs. Spencer to pick us out
one when she went over to get her little girl. We heard last week she
was going, so we sent her word by Richard Spencer’s folks at Carmody
to bring us a smart, likely boy of about ten or eleven. We decided that
would be the best age--old enough to be of some use in doing chores
right off and young enough to be trained up proper. We mean to give him
a good home and schooling. We had a telegram from Mrs. Alexander Spencer
today--the mail-man brought it from the station--saying they were coming
on the five-thirty train tonight. So Matthew went to Bright River to
meet him. Mrs. Spencer will drop him off there. Of course she goes on to
White Sands station herself.”

Mrs. Rachel prided herself on always speaking her mind; she proceeded to
speak it now, having adjusted her mental attitude to this amazing piece
of news.

“Well, Marilla, I’ll just tell you plain that I think you’re doing a
mighty foolish thing--a risky thing, that’s what. You don’t know what
you’re getting. You’re bringing a strange child into your house and home
and you don’t know a single thing about him nor what his disposition is
like nor what sort of parents he had nor how he’s likely to turn out.
Why, it was only last week I read in the paper how a man and his wife up
west of the Island took a boy out of an orphan asylum and he set fire to
the house at night--set it _on purpose_, Marilla--and nearly burnt them to
a crisp in their beds. And I know another case where an adopted boy used
to suck the eggs--they couldn’t break him of it. If you had asked my
advice in the matter--which you didn’t do, Marilla--I’d have said for
mercy’s sake not to think of such a thing, that’s what.”

This Job’s comforting seemed neither to offend nor to alarm Marilla. She
knitted steadily on.

“I don’t deny there’s something in what you say, Rachel. I’ve had some
qualms myself. But Matthew was terrible set on it. I could see that, so
I gave in. It’s so seldom Matthew sets his mind on anything that when he
does I always feel it’s my duty to give in. And as for the risk, there’s
risks in pretty near everything a body does in this world. There’s risks
in people’s having children of their own if it comes to that--they don’t
always turn out well. And then Nova Scotia is right close to the Island.
It isn’t as if we were getting him from England or the States. He can’t
be much different from ourselves.”

“Well, I hope it will turn out all right,” said Mrs. Rachel in a tone
that plainly indicated her painful doubts. “Only don’t say I didn’t
warn you if he burns Green Gables down or puts strychnine in the well--I
heard of a case over in New Brunswick where an orphan asylum child did
that and the whole family died in fearful agonies. Only, it was a girl
in that instance.”

“Well, we’re not getting a girl,” said Marilla, as if poisoning wells
were a purely feminine accomplishment and not to be dreaded in the case
of a boy. “I’d never dream of taking a girl to bring up. I wonder at
Mrs. Alexander Spencer for doing it. But there, _she_ wouldn’t shrink
from adopting a whole orphan asylum if she took it into her head.”

Mrs. Rachel would have liked to stay until Matthew came home with his
imported orphan. But reflecting that it would be a good two hours at
least before his arrival she concluded to go up the road to Robert
Bell’s and tell the news. It would certainly make a sensation second
to none, and Mrs. Rachel dearly loved to make a sensation. So she took
herself away, somewhat to Marilla’s relief, for the latter felt
her doubts and fears reviving under the influence of Mrs. Rachel’s
pessimism.

“Well, of all things that ever were or will be!” ejaculated Mrs. Rachel
when she was safely out in the lane. “It does really seem as if I must
be dreaming. Well, I’m sorry for that poor young one and no mistake.
Matthew and Marilla don’t know anything about children and they’ll
expect him to be wiser and steadier that his own grandfather, if so be’s
he ever had a grandfather, which is doubtful. It seems uncanny to think
of a child at Green Gables somehow; there’s never been one there, for
Matthew and Marilla were grown up when the new house was built--if they
ever _were_ children, which is hard to believe when one looks at them.
I wouldn’t be in that orphan’s shoes for anything. My, but I pity him,
that’s what.”

So said Mrs. Rachel to the wild rose bushes out of the fulness of her
heart; but if she could have seen the child who was waiting patiently
at the Bright River station at that very moment her pity would have been
still deeper and more profound.


CHAPTER II. Matthew Cuthbert is surprised


|MATTHEW Cuthbert and the sorrel mare jogged comfortably over the eight
miles to Bright River. It was a pretty road, running along between
snug farmsteads, with now and again a bit of balsamy fir wood to drive
through or a hollow where wild plums hung out their filmy bloom. The air
was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards and the meadows sloped
away in the distance to horizon mists of pearl and purple; while

     “The little birds sang as if it were
     The one day of summer in all the year.”

Matthew enjoyed the drive after his own fashion, except during the
moments when he met women and had to nod to them--for in Prince Edward
island you are supposed to nod to all and sundry you meet on the road
whether you know them or not.

Matthew dreaded all women except Marilla and Mrs. Rachel; he had an
uncomfortable feeling that the mysterious creatures were secretly
laughing at him. He may have been quite right in thinking so, for he
was an odd-looking personage, with an ungainly figure and long iron-gray
hair that touched his stooping shoulders, and a full, soft brown beard
which he had worn ever since he was twenty. In fact, he had looked
at twenty very much as he looked at sixty, lacking a little of the
grayness.

When he reached Bright River there was no sign of any train; he thought
he was too early, so he tied his horse in the yard of the small Bright
River hotel and went over to the station house. The long platform was
almost deserted; the only living creature in sight being a girl who was
sitting on a pile of shingles at the extreme end. Matthew, barely noting
that it _was_ a girl, sidled past her as quickly as possible without
looking at her. Had he looked he could hardly have failed to notice the
tense rigidity and expectation of her attitude and expression. She was
sitting there waiting for something or somebody and, since sitting and
waiting was the only thing to do just then, she sat and waited with all
her might and main.

Matthew encountered the stationmaster locking up the ticket office
preparatory to going home for supper, and asked him if the five-thirty
train would soon be along.

“The five-thirty train has been in and gone half an hour ago,” answered
that brisk official. “But there was a passenger dropped off for you--a
little girl. She’s sitting out there on the shingles. I asked her to
go into the ladies’ waiting room, but she informed me gravely that she
preferred to stay outside. ‘There was more scope for imagination,’ she
said. She’s a case, I should say.”

“I’m not expecting a girl,” said Matthew blankly. “It’s a boy I’ve come
for. He should be here. Mrs. Alexander Spencer was to bring him over
from Nova Scotia for me.”

The stationmaster whistled.

“Guess there’s some mistake,” he said. “Mrs. Spencer came off the train
with that girl and gave her into my charge. Said you and your sister
were adopting her from an orphan asylum and that you would be along for
her presently. That’s all I know about it--and I haven’t got any more
orphans concealed hereabouts.”

“I don’t understand,” said Matthew helplessly, wishing that Marilla was
at hand to cope with the situation.

“Well, you’d better question the girl,” said the station-master
carelessly. “I dare say she’ll be able to explain--she’s got a tongue
of her own, that’s certain. Maybe they were out of boys of the brand you
wanted.”

He walked jauntily away, being hungry, and the unfortunate Matthew was
left to do that which was harder for him than bearding a lion in its
den--walk up to a girl--a strange girl--an orphan girl--and demand of
her why she wasn’t a boy. Matthew groaned in spirit as he turned about
and shuffled gently down the platform towards her.

She had been watching him ever since he had passed her and she had her
eyes on him now. Matthew was not looking at her and would not have seen
what she was really like if he had been, but an ordinary observer would
have seen this: A child of about eleven, garbed in a very short, very
tight, very ugly dress of yellowish-gray wincey. She wore a faded brown
sailor hat and beneath the hat, extending down her back, were two braids
of very thick, decidedly red hair. Her face was small, white and thin,
also much freckled; her mouth was large and so were her eyes, which
looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others.

So far, the ordinary observer; an extraordinary observer might have seen
that the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes
were full of spirit and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped
and expressive; that the forehead was broad and full; in short,
our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no
commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child of whom
shy Matthew Cuthbert was so ludicrously afraid.

Matthew, however, was spared the ordeal of speaking first, for as soon
as she concluded that he was coming to her she stood up, grasping with
one thin brown hand the handle of a shabby, old-fashioned carpet-bag;
the other she held out to him.

“I suppose you are Mr. Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables?” she said in
a peculiarly clear, sweet voice. “I’m very glad to see you. I was
beginning to be afraid you weren’t coming for me and I was imagining
all the things that might have happened to prevent you. I had made up
my mind that if you didn’t come for me to-night I’d go down the track to
that big wild cherry-tree at the bend, and climb up into it to stay all
night. I wouldn’t be a bit afraid, and it would be lovely to sleep in a
wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don’t you think?
You could imagine you were dwelling in marble halls, couldn’t you? And
I was quite sure you would come for me in the morning, if you didn’t
to-night.”

Matthew had taken the scrawny little hand awkwardly in his; then and
there he decided what to do. He could not tell this child with the
glowing eyes that there had been a mistake; he would take her home and
let Marilla do that. She couldn’t be left at Bright River anyhow, no
matter what mistake had been made, so all questions and explanations
might as well be deferred until he was safely back at Green Gables.

“I’m sorry I was late,” he said shyly. “Come along. The horse is over in
the yard. Give me your bag.”

“Oh, I can carry it,” the child responded cheerfully. “It isn’t heavy.
I’ve got all my worldly goods in it, but it isn’t heavy. And if it isn’t
carried in just a certain way the handle pulls out--so I’d better
keep it because I know the exact knack of it. It’s an extremely old
carpet-bag. Oh, I’m very glad you’ve come, even if it would have been
nice to sleep in a wild cherry-tree. We’ve got to drive a long piece,
haven’t we? Mrs. Spencer said it was eight miles. I’m glad because I
love driving. Oh, it seems so wonderful that I’m going to live with you
and belong to you. I’ve never belonged to anybody--not really. But the
asylum was the worst. I’ve only been in it four months, but that was
enough. I don’t suppose you ever were an orphan in an asylum, so you
can’t possibly understand what it is like. It’s worse than anything you
could imagine. Mrs. Spencer said it was wicked of me to talk like
that, but I didn’t mean to be wicked. It’s so easy to be wicked without
knowing it, isn’t it? They were good, you know--the asylum people. But
there is so little scope for the imagination in an asylum--only just
in the other orphans. It was pretty interesting to imagine things about
them--to imagine that perhaps the girl who sat next to you was really
the daughter of a belted earl, who had been stolen away from her parents
in her infancy by a cruel nurse who died before she could confess. I
used to lie awake at nights and imagine things like that, because
I didn’t have time in the day. I guess that’s why I’m so thin--I _am_
dreadful thin, ain’t I? There isn’t a pick on my bones. I do love to
imagine I’m nice and plump, with dimples in my elbows.”

With this Matthew’s companion stopped talking, partly because she was
out of breath and partly because they had reached the buggy. Not another
word did she say until they had left the village and were driving down
a steep little hill, the road part of which had been cut so deeply into
the soft soil, that the banks, fringed with blooming wild cherry-trees
and slim white birches, were several feet above their heads.

The child put out her hand and broke off a branch of wild plum that
brushed against the side of the buggy.

“Isn’t that beautiful? What did that tree, leaning out from the bank,
all white and lacy, make you think of?” she asked.

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew.

“Why, a bride, of course--a bride all in white with a lovely misty veil.
I’ve never seen one, but I can imagine what she would look like. I don’t
ever expect to be a bride myself. I’m so homely nobody will ever want to
marry me--unless it might be a foreign missionary. I suppose a foreign
missionary mightn’t be very particular. But I do hope that some day I
shall have a white dress. That is my highest ideal of earthly bliss. I
just love pretty clothes. And I’ve never had a pretty dress in my life
that I can remember--but of course it’s all the more to look forward
to, isn’t it? And then I can imagine that I’m dressed gorgeously. This
morning when I left the asylum I felt so ashamed because I had to wear
this horrid old wincey dress. All the orphans had to wear them, you
know. A merchant in Hopeton last winter donated three hundred yards of
wincey to the asylum. Some people said it was because he couldn’t sell
it, but I’d rather believe that it was out of the kindness of his heart,
wouldn’t you? When we got on the train I felt as if everybody must be
looking at me and pitying me. But I just went to work and imagined that
I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress--because when you _are_
imagining you might as well imagine something worth while--and a big
hat all flowers and nodding plumes, and a gold watch, and kid gloves and
boots. I felt cheered up right away and I enjoyed my trip to the Island
with all my might. I wasn’t a bit sick coming over in the boat. Neither
was Mrs. Spencer although she generally is. She said she hadn’t time
to get sick, watching to see that I didn’t fall overboard. She said she
never saw the beat of me for prowling about. But if it kept her from
being seasick it’s a mercy I did prowl, isn’t it? And I wanted to see
everything that was to be seen on that boat, because I didn’t know
whether I’d ever have another opportunity. Oh, there are a lot more
cherry-trees all in bloom! This Island is the bloomiest place. I just
love it already, and I’m so glad I’m going to live here. I’ve always
heard that Prince Edward Island was the prettiest place in the world,
and I used to imagine I was living here, but I never really expected I
would. It’s delightful when your imaginations come true, isn’t it?
But those red roads are so funny. When we got into the train at
Charlottetown and the red roads began to flash past I asked Mrs. Spencer
what made them red and she said she didn’t know and for pity’s sake not
to ask her any more questions. She said I must have asked her a thousand
already. I suppose I had, too, but how you going to find out about
things if you don’t ask questions? And what _does_ make the roads red?”

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew.

“Well, that is one of the things to find out sometime. Isn’t it splendid
to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes
me feel glad to be alive--it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be
half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There’d
be no scope for imagination then, would there? But am I talking too
much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn’t
talk? If you say so I’ll stop. I can _stop_ when I make up my mind to it,
although it’s difficult.”

Matthew, much to his own surprise, was enjoying himself. Like most quiet
folks he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking
themselves and did not expect him to keep up his end of it. But he had
never expected to enjoy the society of a little girl. Women were bad
enough in all conscience, but little girls were worse. He detested the
way they had of sidling past him timidly, with sidewise glances, as if
they expected him to gobble them up at a mouthful if they ventured to
say a word. That was the Avonlea type of well-bred little girl. But
this freckled witch was very different, and although he found it rather
difficult for his slower intelligence to keep up with her brisk mental
processes he thought that he “kind of liked her chatter.” So he said as
shyly as usual:

“Oh, you can talk as much as you like. I don’t mind.”

“Oh, I’m so glad. I know you and I are going to get along together
fine. It’s such a relief to talk when one wants to and not be told
that children should be seen and not heard. I’ve had that said to me a
million times if I have once. And people laugh at me because I use big
words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express
them, haven’t you?”

“Well now, that seems reasonable,” said Matthew.

“Mrs. Spencer said that my tongue must be hung in the middle. But it
isn’t--it’s firmly fastened at one end. Mrs. Spencer said your place was
named Green Gables. I asked her all about it. And she said there were
trees all around it. I was gladder than ever. I just love trees. And
there weren’t any at all about the asylum, only a few poor weeny-teeny
things out in front with little whitewashed cagey things about them.
They just looked like orphans themselves, those trees did. It used to
make me want to cry to look at them. I used to say to them, ‘Oh, you
_poor_ little things! If you were out in a great big woods with other
trees all around you and little mosses and June bells growing over your
roots and a brook not far away and birds singing in you branches, you
could grow, couldn’t you? But you can’t where you are. I know just
exactly how you feel, little trees.’ I felt sorry to leave them behind
this morning. You do get so attached to things like that, don’t you? Is
there a brook anywhere near Green Gables? I forgot to ask Mrs. Spencer
that.”

“Well now, yes, there’s one right below the house.”

“Fancy. It’s always been one of my dreams to live near a brook. I
never expected I would, though. Dreams don’t often come true, do they?
Wouldn’t it be nice if they did? But just now I feel pretty nearly
perfectly happy. I can’t feel exactly perfectly happy because--well,
what color would you call this?”

She twitched one of her long glossy braids over her thin shoulder and
held it up before Matthew’s eyes. Matthew was not used to deciding on
the tints of ladies’ tresses, but in this case there couldn’t be much
doubt.

“It’s red, ain’t it?” he said.

The girl let the braid drop back with a sigh that seemed to come from
her very toes and to exhale forth all the sorrows of the ages.

“Yes, it’s red,” she said resignedly. “Now you see why I can’t be
perfectly happy. Nobody could who has red hair. I don’t mind the other
things so much--the freckles and the green eyes and my skinniness. I
can imagine them away. I can imagine that I have a beautiful rose-leaf
complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I _cannot_ imagine that
red hair away. I do my best. I think to myself, ‘Now my hair is a
glorious black, black as the raven’s wing.’ But all the time I _know_ it
is just plain red and it breaks my heart. It will be my lifelong sorrow.
I read of a girl once in a novel who had a lifelong sorrow but it wasn’t
red hair. Her hair was pure gold rippling back from her alabaster brow.
What is an alabaster brow? I never could find out. Can you tell me?”

“Well now, I’m afraid I can’t,” said Matthew, who was getting a little
dizzy. He felt as he had once felt in his rash youth when another boy
had enticed him on the merry-go-round at a picnic.

“Well, whatever it was it must have been something nice because she was
divinely beautiful. Have you ever imagined what it must feel like to be
divinely beautiful?”

“Well now, no, I haven’t,” confessed Matthew ingenuously.

“I have, often. Which would you rather be if you had the
choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?”

“Well now, I--I don’t know exactly.”

“Neither do I. I can never decide. But it doesn’t make much real
difference for it isn’t likely I’ll ever be either. It’s certain I’ll
never be angelically good. Mrs. Spencer says--oh, Mr. Cuthbert! Oh, Mr.
Cuthbert!! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!!!”

That was not what Mrs. Spencer had said; neither had the child tumbled
out of the buggy nor had Matthew done anything astonishing. They had
simply rounded a curve in the road and found themselves in the “Avenue.”

The “Avenue,” so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road
four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge,
wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old
farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the
boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse
of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a
cathedral aisle.

Its beauty seemed to strike the child dumb. She leaned back in the
buggy, her thin hands clasped before her, her face lifted rapturously to
the white splendor above. Even when they had passed out and were driving
down the long slope to Newbridge she never moved or spoke. Still with
rapt face she gazed afar into the sunset west, with eyes that saw
visions trooping splendidly across that glowing background. Through
Newbridge, a bustling little village where dogs barked at them and small
boys hooted and curious faces peered from the windows, they drove, still
in silence. When three more miles had dropped away behind them the child
had not spoken. She could keep silence, it was evident, as energetically
as she could talk.

“I guess you’re feeling pretty tired and hungry,” Matthew ventured to
say at last, accounting for her long visitation of dumbness with the
only reason he could think of. “But we haven’t very far to go now--only
another mile.”

She came out of her reverie with a deep sigh and looked at him with the
dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wondering afar, star-led.

“Oh, Mr. Cuthbert,” she whispered, “that place we came through--that
white place--what was it?”

“Well now, you must mean the Avenue,” said Matthew after a few moments’
profound reflection. “It is a kind of pretty place.”

“Pretty? Oh, _pretty_ doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful,
either. They don’t go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful--wonderful.
It’s the first thing I ever saw that couldn’t be improved upon by
imagination. It just satisfies me here”--she put one hand on her
breast--“it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did
you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?”

“Well now, I just can’t recollect that I ever had.”

“I have it lots of time--whenever I see anything royally beautiful. But
they shouldn’t call that lovely place the Avenue. There is no meaning
in a name like that. They should call it--let me see--the White Way of
Delight. Isn’t that a nice imaginative name? When I don’t like the name
of a place or a person I always imagine a new one and always think of
them so. There was a girl at the asylum whose name was Hepzibah Jenkins,
but I always imagined her as Rosalia DeVere. Other people may call that
place the Avenue, but I shall always call it the White Way of Delight.
Have we really only another mile to go before we get home? I’m glad and
I’m sorry. I’m sorry because this drive has been so pleasant and I’m
always sorry when pleasant things end. Something still pleasanter may
come after, but you can never be sure. And it’s so often the case that
it isn’t pleasanter. That has been my experience anyhow. But I’m glad to
think of getting home. You see, I’ve never had a real home since I can
remember. It gives me that pleasant ache again just to think of coming
to a really truly home. Oh, isn’t that pretty!”

They had driven over the crest of a hill. Below them was a pond, looking
almost like a river so long and winding was it. A bridge spanned it
midway and from there to its lower end, where an amber-hued belt of
sand-hills shut it in from the dark blue gulf beyond, the water was a
glory of many shifting hues--the most spiritual shadings of crocus and
rose and ethereal green, with other elusive tintings for which no name
has ever been found. Above the bridge the pond ran up into fringing
groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly translucent in their wavering
shadows. Here and there a wild plum leaned out from the bank like a
white-clad girl tip-toeing to her own reflection. From the marsh at the
head of the pond came the clear, mournfully-sweet chorus of the frogs.
There was a little gray house peering around a white apple orchard on
a slope beyond and, although it was not yet quite dark, a light was
shining from one of its windows.

“That’s Barry’s pond,” said Matthew.

“Oh, I don’t like that name, either. I shall call it--let me see--the
Lake of Shining Waters. Yes, that is the right name for it. I know
because of the thrill. When I hit on a name that suits exactly it gives
me a thrill. Do things ever give you a thrill?”

Matthew ruminated.

“Well now, yes. It always kind of gives me a thrill to see them ugly
white grubs that spade up in the cucumber beds. I hate the look of
them.”

“Oh, I don’t think that can be exactly the same kind of a thrill. Do you
think it can? There doesn’t seem to be much connection between grubs
and lakes of shining waters, does there? But why do other people call it
Barry’s pond?”

“I reckon because Mr. Barry lives up there in that house. Orchard
Slope’s the name of his place. If it wasn’t for that big bush behind it
you could see Green Gables from here. But we have to go over the bridge
and round by the road, so it’s near half a mile further.”

“Has Mr. Barry any little girls? Well, not so very little either--about
my size.”

“He’s got one about eleven. Her name is Diana.”

“Oh!” with a long indrawing of breath. “What a perfectly lovely name!”

“Well now, I dunno. There’s something dreadful heathenish about it,
seems to me. I’d ruther Jane or Mary or some sensible name like that.
But when Diana was born there was a schoolmaster boarding there and they
gave him the naming of her and he called her Diana.”

“I wish there had been a schoolmaster like that around when I was born,
then. Oh, here we are at the bridge. I’m going to shut my eyes tight.
I’m always afraid going over bridges. I can’t help imagining that
perhaps just as we get to the middle, they’ll crumple up like a
jack-knife and nip us. So I shut my eyes. But I always have to open them
for all when I think we’re getting near the middle. Because, you see, if
the bridge _did_ crumple up I’d want to _see_ it crumple. What a jolly
rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it. Isn’t it splendid
there are so many things to like in this world? There we’re over. Now
I’ll look back. Good night, dear Lake of Shining Waters. I always say
good night to the things I love, just as I would to people. I think they
like it. That water looks as if it was smiling at me.”

When they had driven up the further hill and around a corner Matthew
said:

“We’re pretty near home now. That’s Green Gables over--”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” she interrupted breathlessly, catching at his
partially raised arm and shutting her eyes that she might not see his
gesture. “Let me guess. I’m sure I’ll guess right.”

She opened her eyes and looked about her. They were on the crest of a
hill. The sun had set some time since, but the landscape was still
clear in the mellow afterlight. To the west a dark church spire rose
up against a marigold sky. Below was a little valley and beyond a long,
gently-rising slope with snug farmsteads scattered along it. From one
to another the child’s eyes darted, eager and wistful. At last they
lingered on one away to the left, far back from the road, dimly white
with blossoming trees in the twilight of the surrounding woods. Over it,
in the stainless southwest sky, a great crystal-white star was shining
like a lamp of guidance and promise.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” she said, pointing.

Matthew slapped the reins on the sorrel’s back delightedly.

“Well now, you’ve guessed it! But I reckon Mrs. Spencer described it
so’s you could tell.”

“No, she didn’t--really she didn’t. All she said might just as well have
been about most of those other places. I hadn’t any real idea what it
looked like. But just as soon as I saw it I felt it was home. Oh, it
seems as if I must be in a dream. Do you know, my arm must be black and
blue from the elbow up, for I’ve pinched myself so many times today.
Every little while a horrible sickening feeling would come over me and
I’d be so afraid it was all a dream. Then I’d pinch myself to see if it
was real--until suddenly I remembered that even supposing it was only
a dream I’d better go on dreaming as long as I could; so I stopped
pinching. But it _is_ real and we’re nearly home.”

With a sigh of rapture she relapsed into silence. Matthew stirred
uneasily. He felt glad that it would be Marilla and not he who would
have to tell this waif of the world that the home she longed for was
not to be hers after all. They drove over Lynde’s Hollow, where it was
already quite dark, but not so dark that Mrs. Rachel could not see them
from her window vantage, and up the hill and into the long lane of Green
Gables. By the time they arrived at the house Matthew was shrinking from
the approaching revelation with an energy he did not understand. It was
not of Marilla or himself he was thinking of the trouble this mistake
was probably going to make for them, but of the child’s disappointment.
When he thought of that rapt light being quenched in her eyes he had
an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to assist at murdering
something--much the same feeling that came over him when he had to kill
a lamb or calf or any other innocent little creature.

The yard was quite dark as they turned into it and the poplar leaves
were rustling silkily all round it.

“Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,” she whispered, as he
lifted her to the ground. “What nice dreams they must have!”

Then, holding tightly to the carpet-bag which contained “all her worldly
goods,” she followed him into the house.


CHAPTER III. Marilla Cuthbert is Surprised


|MARILLA came briskly forward as Matthew opened the door. But when her
eyes fell on the odd little figure in the stiff, ugly dress, with the
long braids of red hair and the eager, luminous eyes, she stopped short
in amazement.

“Matthew Cuthbert, who’s that?” she ejaculated. “Where is the boy?”

“There wasn’t any boy,” said Matthew wretchedly. “There was only _her_.”

He nodded at the child, remembering that he had never even asked her
name.

“No boy! But there _must_ have been a boy,” insisted Marilla. “We sent
word to Mrs. Spencer to bring a boy.”

“Well, she didn’t. She brought _her_. I asked the station-master. And I
had to bring her home. She couldn’t be left there, no matter where the
mistake had come in.”

“Well, this is a pretty piece of business!” ejaculated Marilla.

During this dialogue the child had remained silent, her eyes roving from
one to the other, all the animation fading out of her face. Suddenly
she seemed to grasp the full meaning of what had been said. Dropping her
precious carpet-bag she sprang forward a step and clasped her hands.

“You don’t want me!” she cried. “You don’t want me because I’m not a
boy! I might have expected it. Nobody ever did want me. I might have
known it was all too beautiful to last. I might have known nobody really
did want me. Oh, what shall I do? I’m going to burst into tears!”

Burst into tears she did. Sitting down on a chair by the table, flinging
her arms out upon it, and burying her face in them, she proceeded to cry
stormily. Marilla and Matthew looked at each other deprecatingly across
the stove. Neither of them knew what to say or do. Finally Marilla
stepped lamely into the breach.

“Well, well, there’s no need to cry so about it.”

“Yes, there _is_ need!” The child raised her head quickly, revealing a
tear-stained face and trembling lips. “_You_ would cry, too, if you were
an orphan and had come to a place you thought was going to be home and
found that they didn’t want you because you weren’t a boy. Oh, this is
the most _tragical_ thing that ever happened to me!”

Something like a reluctant smile, rather rusty from long disuse,
mellowed Marilla’s grim expression.

“Well, don’t cry any more. We’re not going to turn you out-of-doors
to-night. You’ll have to stay here until we investigate this affair.
What’s your name?”

The child hesitated for a moment.

“Will you please call me Cordelia?” she said eagerly.

“_Call_ you Cordelia? Is that your name?”

“No-o-o, it’s not exactly my name, but I would love to be called
Cordelia. It’s such a perfectly elegant name.”

“I don’t know what on earth you mean. If Cordelia isn’t your name, what
is?”

“Anne Shirley,” reluctantly faltered forth the owner of that name, “but,
oh, please do call me Cordelia. It can’t matter much to you what you
call me if I’m only going to be here a little while, can it? And Anne is
such an unromantic name.”

“Unromantic fiddlesticks!” said the unsympathetic Marilla. “Anne is a
real good plain sensible name. You’ve no need to be ashamed of it.”

“Oh, I’m not ashamed of it,” explained Anne, “only I like Cordelia
better. I’ve always imagined that my name was Cordelia--at least, I
always have of late years. When I was young I used to imagine it was
Geraldine, but I like Cordelia better now. But if you call me Anne
please call me Anne spelled with an E.”

“What difference does it make how it’s spelled?” asked Marilla with
another rusty smile as she picked up the teapot.

“Oh, it makes _such_ a difference. It _looks_ so much nicer. When you hear
a name pronounced can’t you always see it in your mind, just as if it
was printed out? I can; and A-n-n looks dreadful, but A-n-n-e looks so
much more distinguished. If you’ll only call me Anne spelled with an E I
shall try to reconcile myself to not being called Cordelia.”

“Very well, then, Anne spelled with an E, can you tell us how this
mistake came to be made? We sent word to Mrs. Spencer to bring us a boy.
Were there no boys at the asylum?”

“Oh, yes, there was an abundance of them. But Mrs. Spencer said
_distinctly_ that you wanted a girl about eleven years old. And the
matron said she thought I would do. You don’t know how delighted I was.
I couldn’t sleep all last night for joy. Oh,” she added reproachfully,
turning to Matthew, “why didn’t you tell me at the station that you
didn’t want me and leave me there? If I hadn’t seen the White Way of
Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters it wouldn’t be so hard.”

“What on earth does she mean?” demanded Marilla, staring at Matthew.

“She--she’s just referring to some conversation we had on the road,”
 said Matthew hastily. “I’m going out to put the mare in, Marilla. Have
tea ready when I come back.”

“Did Mrs. Spencer bring anybody over besides you?” continued Marilla
when Matthew had gone out.

“She brought Lily Jones for herself. Lily is only five years old and she
is very beautiful and had nut-brown hair. If I was very beautiful and
had nut-brown hair would you keep me?”

“No. We want a boy to help Matthew on the farm. A girl would be of
no use to us. Take off your hat. I’ll lay it and your bag on the hall
table.”

Anne took off her hat meekly. Matthew came back presently and they sat
down to supper. But Anne could not eat. In vain she nibbled at the
bread and butter and pecked at the crab-apple preserve out of the little
scalloped glass dish by her plate. She did not really make any headway
at all.

“You’re not eating anything,” said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it
were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed.

“I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the
depths of despair?”

“I’ve never been in the depths of despair, so I can’t say,” responded
Marilla.

“Weren’t you? Well, did you ever try to _imagine_ you were in the depths
of despair?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then I don’t think you can understand what it’s like. It’s a very
uncomfortable feeling indeed. When you try to eat a lump comes right
up in your throat and you can’t swallow anything, not even if it was a
chocolate caramel. I had one chocolate caramel once two years ago and it
was simply delicious. I’ve often dreamed since then that I had a lot
of chocolate caramels, but I always wake up just when I’m going to eat
them. I do hope you won’t be offended because I can’t eat. Everything is
extremely nice, but still I cannot eat.”

“I guess she’s tired,” said Matthew, who hadn’t spoken since his return
from the barn. “Best put her to bed, Marilla.”

Marilla had been wondering where Anne should be put to bed. She had
prepared a couch in the kitchen chamber for the desired and expected
boy. But, although it was neat and clean, it did not seem quite the
thing to put a girl there somehow. But the spare room was out of the
question for such a stray waif, so there remained only the east gable
room. Marilla lighted a candle and told Anne to follow her, which Anne
spiritlessly did, taking her hat and carpet-bag from the hall table as
she passed. The hall was fearsomely clean; the little gable chamber in
which she presently found herself seemed still cleaner.

Marilla set the candle on a three-legged, three-cornered table and
turned down the bedclothes.

“I suppose you have a nightgown?” she questioned.

Anne nodded.

“Yes, I have two. The matron of the asylum made them for me. They’re
fearfully skimpy. There is never enough to go around in an asylum, so
things are always skimpy--at least in a poor asylum like ours. I hate
skimpy night-dresses. But one can dream just as well in them as
in lovely trailing ones, with frills around the neck, that’s one
consolation.”

“Well, undress as quick as you can and go to bed. I’ll come back in a
few minutes for the candle. I daren’t trust you to put it out yourself.
You’d likely set the place on fire.”

When Marilla had gone Anne looked around her wistfully. The whitewashed
walls were so painfully bare and staring that she thought they must ache
over their own bareness. The floor was bare, too, except for a round
braided mat in the middle such as Anne had never seen before. In
one corner was the bed, a high, old-fashioned one, with four dark,
low-turned posts. In the other corner was the aforesaid three-corner
table adorned with a fat, red velvet pin-cushion hard enough to turn the
point of the most adventurous pin. Above it hung a little six-by-eight
mirror. Midway between table and bed was the window, with an icy white
muslin frill over it, and opposite it was the wash-stand. The whole
apartment was of a rigidity not to be described in words, but which
sent a shiver to the very marrow of Anne’s bones. With a sob she hastily
discarded her garments, put on the skimpy nightgown and sprang into bed
where she burrowed face downward into the pillow and pulled the clothes
over her head. When Marilla came up for the light various skimpy
articles of raiment scattered most untidily over the floor and a certain
tempestuous appearance of the bed were the only indications of any
presence save her own.

She deliberately picked up Anne’s clothes, placed them neatly on a prim
yellow chair, and then, taking up the candle, went over to the bed.

“Good night,” she said, a little awkwardly, but not unkindly.

Anne’s white face and big eyes appeared over the bedclothes with a
startling suddenness.

“How can you call it a _good_ night when you know it must be the very
worst night I’ve ever had?” she said reproachfully.

Then she dived down into invisibility again.

Marilla went slowly down to the kitchen and proceeded to wash the supper
dishes. Matthew was smoking--a sure sign of perturbation of mind. He
seldom smoked, for Marilla set her face against it as a filthy habit;
but at certain times and seasons he felt driven to it and them Marilla
winked at the practice, realizing that a mere man must have some vent
for his emotions.

“Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish,” she said wrathfully. “This is
what comes of sending word instead of going ourselves. Richard Spencer’s
folks have twisted that message somehow. One of us will have to drive
over and see Mrs. Spencer tomorrow, that’s certain. This girl will have
to be sent back to the asylum.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Matthew reluctantly.

“You _suppose_ so! Don’t you know it?”

“Well now, she’s a real nice little thing, Marilla. It’s kind of a pity
to send her back when she’s so set on staying here.”

“Matthew Cuthbert, you don’t mean to say you think we ought to keep
her!”

Marilla’s astonishment could not have been greater if Matthew had
expressed a predilection for standing on his head.

“Well, now, no, I suppose not--not exactly,” stammered Matthew,
uncomfortably driven into a corner for his precise meaning. “I
suppose--we could hardly be expected to keep her.”

“I should say not. What good would she be to us?”

“We might be some good to her,” said Matthew suddenly and unexpectedly.

“Matthew Cuthbert, I believe that child has bewitched you! I can see as
plain as plain that you want to keep her.”

“Well now, she’s a real interesting little thing,” persisted Matthew.
“You should have heard her talk coming from the station.”

“Oh, she can talk fast enough. I saw that at once. It’s nothing in her
favour, either. I don’t like children who have so much to say. I don’t
want an orphan girl and if I did she isn’t the style I’d pick out.
There’s something I don’t understand about her. No, she’s got to be
despatched straight-way back to where she came from.”

“I could hire a French boy to help me,” said Matthew, “and she’d be
company for you.”

“I’m not suffering for company,” said Marilla shortly. “And I’m not
going to keep her.”

“Well now, it’s just as you say, of course, Marilla,” said Matthew
rising and putting his pipe away. “I’m going to bed.”

To bed went Matthew. And to bed, when she had put her dishes away, went
Marilla, frowning most resolutely. And up-stairs, in the east gable, a
lonely, heart-hungry, friendless child cried herself to sleep.


CHAPTER IV. Morning at Green Gables


|IT was broad daylight when Anne awoke and sat up in bed, staring
confusedly at the window through which a flood of cheery sunshine was
pouring and outside of which something white and feathery waved across
glimpses of blue sky.

For a moment she could not remember where she was. First came a
delightful thrill, as something very pleasant; then a horrible
remembrance. This was Green Gables and they didn’t want her because she
wasn’t a boy!

But it was morning and, yes, it was a cherry-tree in full bloom outside
of her window. With a bound she was out of bed and across the floor.
She pushed up the sash--it went up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn’t
been opened for a long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight
that nothing was needed to hold it up.

Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes
glistening with delight. Oh, wasn’t it beautiful? Wasn’t it a lovely
place? Suppose she wasn’t really going to stay here! She would imagine
she was. There was scope for imagination here.

A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against
the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf
was to be seen. On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of
apple-trees and one of cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms;
and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below
were lilac-trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance
drifted up to the window on the morning wind.

Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the
hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew,
upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful
possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally. Beyond it
was a hill, green and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in
it where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen from the
other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible.

Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over
green, low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea.

Anne’s beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily
in. She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child;
but this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed.

She knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness around her, until
she was startled by a hand on her shoulder. Marilla had come in unheard
by the small dreamer.

“It’s time you were dressed,” she said curtly.

Marilla really did not know how to talk to the child, and her
uncomfortable ignorance made her crisp and curt when she did not mean to
be.

Anne stood up and drew a long breath.

“Oh, isn’t it wonderful?” she said, waving her hand comprehensively at
the good world outside.

“It’s a big tree,” said Marilla, “and it blooms great, but the fruit
don’t amount to much never--small and wormy.”

“Oh, I don’t mean just the tree; of course it’s lovely--yes, it’s
_radiantly_ lovely--it blooms as if it meant it--but I meant everything,
the garden and the orchard and the brook and the woods, the whole big
dear world. Don’t you feel as if you just loved the world on a morning
like this? And I can hear the brook laughing all the way up here.
Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are? They’re always
laughing. Even in winter-time I’ve heard them under the ice. I’m so glad
there’s a brook near Green Gables. Perhaps you think it doesn’t make any
difference to me when you’re not going to keep me, but it does. I shall
always like to remember that there is a brook at Green Gables even if
I never see it again. If there wasn’t a brook I’d be _haunted_ by the
uncomfortable feeling that there ought to be one. I’m not in the depths
of despair this morning. I never can be in the morning. Isn’t it a
splendid thing that there are mornings? But I feel very sad. I’ve just
been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was
to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted.
But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have
to stop and that hurts.”

“You’d better get dressed and come down-stairs and never mind your
imaginings,” said Marilla as soon as she could get a word in edgewise.
“Breakfast is waiting. Wash your face and comb your hair. Leave the
window up and turn your bedclothes back over the foot of the bed. Be as
smart as you can.”

Anne could evidently be smart to some purpose for she was down-stairs
in ten minutes’ time, with her clothes neatly on, her hair brushed and
braided, her face washed, and a comfortable consciousness pervading her
soul that she had fulfilled all Marilla’s requirements. As a matter of
fact, however, she had forgotten to turn back the bedclothes.

“I’m pretty hungry this morning,” she announced as she slipped into the
chair Marilla placed for her. “The world doesn’t seem such a howling
wilderness as it did last night. I’m so glad it’s a sunshiny morning.
But I like rainy mornings real well, too. All sorts of mornings are
interesting, don’t you think? You don’t know what’s going to happen
through the day, and there’s so much scope for imagination. But I’m
glad it’s not rainy today because it’s easier to be cheerful and bear
up under affliction on a sunshiny day. I feel that I have a good deal
to bear up under. It’s all very well to read about sorrows and imagine
yourself living through them heroically, but it’s not so nice when you
really come to have them, is it?”

“For pity’s sake hold your tongue,” said Marilla. “You talk entirely too
much for a little girl.”

Thereupon Anne held her tongue so obediently and thoroughly that her
continued silence made Marilla rather nervous, as if in the presence of
something not exactly natural. Matthew also held his tongue,--but this
was natural,--so that the meal was a very silent one.

As it progressed Anne became more and more abstracted, eating
mechanically, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the
sky outside the window. This made Marilla more nervous than ever; she
had an uncomfortable feeling that while this odd child’s body might
be there at the table her spirit was far away in some remote airy
cloudland, borne aloft on the wings of imagination. Who would want such
a child about the place?

Yet Matthew wished to keep her, of all unaccountable things! Marilla
felt that he wanted it just as much this morning as he had the night
before, and that he would go on wanting it. That was Matthew’s way--take
a whim into his head and cling to it with the most amazing silent
persistency--a persistency ten times more potent and effectual in its
very silence than if he had talked it out.

When the meal was ended Anne came out of her reverie and offered to wash
the dishes.

“Can you wash dishes right?” asked Marilla distrustfully.

“Pretty well. I’m better at looking after children, though. I’ve had so
much experience at that. It’s such a pity you haven’t any here for me to
look after.”

“I don’t feel as if I wanted any more children to look after than I’ve
got at present. _You’re_ problem enough in all conscience. What’s to be
done with you I don’t know. Matthew is a most ridiculous man.”

“I think he’s lovely,” said Anne reproachfully. “He is so very
sympathetic. He didn’t mind how much I talked--he seemed to like it. I
felt that he was a kindred spirit as soon as ever I saw him.”

“You’re both queer enough, if that’s what you mean by kindred spirits,”
 said Marilla with a sniff. “Yes, you may wash the dishes. Take plenty of
hot water, and be sure you dry them well. I’ve got enough to attend to
this morning for I’ll have to drive over to White Sands in the afternoon
and see Mrs. Spencer. You’ll come with me and we’ll settle what’s to be
done with you. After you’ve finished the dishes go up-stairs and make
your bed.”

Anne washed the dishes deftly enough, as Marilla who kept a sharp eye on
the process, discerned. Later on she made her bed less successfully, for
she had never learned the art of wrestling with a feather tick. But is
was done somehow and smoothed down; and then Marilla, to get rid of her,
told her she might go out-of-doors and amuse herself until dinner time.

Anne flew to the door, face alight, eyes glowing. On the very threshold
she stopped short, wheeled about, came back and sat down by the table,
light and glow as effectually blotted out as if some one had clapped an
extinguisher on her.

“What’s the matter now?” demanded Marilla.

“I don’t dare go out,” said Anne, in the tone of a martyr relinquishing
all earthly joys. “If I can’t stay here there is no use in my loving
Green Gables. And if I go out there and get acquainted with all those
trees and flowers and the orchard and the brook I’ll not be able to help
loving it. It’s hard enough now, so I won’t make it any harder. I want
to go out so much--everything seems to be calling to me, ‘Anne, Anne,
come out to us. Anne, Anne, we want a playmate’--but it’s better not.
There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is
there? And it’s so hard to keep from loving things, isn’t it? That was
why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here. I thought
I’d have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me. But that brief
dream is over. I am resigned to my fate now, so I don’t think I’ll
go out for fear I’ll get unresigned again. What is the name of that
geranium on the window-sill, please?”

“That’s the apple-scented geranium.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that sort of a name. I mean just a name you gave it
yourself. Didn’t you give it a name? May I give it one then? May I call
it--let me see--Bonny would do--may I call it Bonny while I’m here? Oh,
do let me!”

“Goodness, I don’t care. But where on earth is the sense of naming a
geranium?”

“Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It
makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a
geranium’s feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You
wouldn’t like to be called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I
shall call it Bonny. I named that cherry-tree outside my bedroom window
this morning. I called it Snow Queen because it was so white. Of course,
it won’t always be in blossom, but one can imagine that it is, can’t
one?”

“I never in all my life saw or heard anything to equal her,” muttered
Marilla, beating a retreat down to the cellar after potatoes. “She
is kind of interesting as Matthew says. I can feel already that I’m
wondering what on earth she’ll say next. She’ll be casting a spell over
me, too. She’s cast it over Matthew. That look he gave me when he went
out said everything he said or hinted last night over again. I wish he
was like other men and would talk things out. A body could answer back
then and argue him into reason. But what’s to be done with a man who
just _looks?_”

Anne had relapsed into reverie, with her chin in her hands and her eyes
on the sky, when Marilla returned from her cellar pilgrimage. There
Marilla left her until the early dinner was on the table.

“I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon, Matthew?” said
Marilla.

Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne. Marilla intercepted the
look and said grimly:

“I’m going to drive over to White Sands and settle this thing. I’ll take
Anne with me and Mrs. Spencer will probably make arrangements to send
her back to Nova Scotia at once. I’ll set your tea out for you and I’ll
be home in time to milk the cows.”

Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having wasted
words and breath. There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won’t
talk back--unless it is a woman who won’t.

Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Marilla and
Anne set off. Matthew opened the yard gate for them and as they drove
slowly through, he said, to nobody in particular as it seemed:

“Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning, and I told him
I guessed I’d hire him for the summer.”

Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a vicious
clip with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such treatment, whizzed
indignantly down the lane at an alarming pace. Marilla looked back once
as the buggy bounced along and saw that aggravating Matthew leaning over
the gate, looking wistfully after them.


CHAPTER V. Anne’s History


|DO you know,” said Anne confidentially, “I’ve made up my mind to enjoy
this drive. It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy
things if you make up your mind firmly that you will. Of course, you
must make it up _firmly_. I am not going to think about going back to
the asylum while we’re having our drive. I’m just going to think about
the drive. Oh, look, there’s one little early wild rose out! Isn’t it
lovely? Don’t you think it must be glad to be a rose? Wouldn’t it be
nice if roses could talk? I’m sure they could tell us such lovely
things. And isn’t pink the most bewitching color in the world? I love
it, but I can’t wear it. Redheaded people can’t wear pink, not even in
imagination. Did you ever know of anybody whose hair was red when she
was young, but got to be another color when she grew up?”

“No, I don’t know as I ever did,” said Marilla mercilessly, “and I
shouldn’t think it likely to happen in your case either.”

Anne sighed.

“Well, that is another hope gone. ‘My life is a perfect graveyard of
buried hopes.’ That’s a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it
over to comfort myself whenever I’m disappointed in anything.”

“I don’t see where the comforting comes in myself,” said Marilla.

“Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if I were a
heroine in a book, you know. I am so fond of romantic things, and a
graveyard full of buried hopes is about as romantic a thing as one can
imagine isn’t it? I’m rather glad I have one. Are we going across the
Lake of Shining Waters today?”

“We’re not going over Barry’s pond, if that’s what you mean by your Lake
of Shining Waters. We’re going by the shore road.”

“Shore road sounds nice,” said Anne dreamily. “Is it as nice as it
sounds? Just when you said ‘shore road’ I saw it in a picture in my
mind, as quick as that! And White Sands is a pretty name, too; but I
don’t like it as well as Avonlea. Avonlea is a lovely name. It just
sounds like music. How far is it to White Sands?”

“It’s five miles; and as you’re evidently bent on talking you might as
well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about yourself.”

“Oh, what I _know_ about myself isn’t really worth telling,” said Anne
eagerly. “If you’ll only let me tell you what I _imagine_ about myself
you’ll think it ever so much more interesting.”

“No, I don’t want any of your imaginings. Just you stick to bald facts.
Begin at the beginning. Where were you born and how old are you?”

“I was eleven last March,” said Anne, resigning herself to bald facts
with a little sigh. “And I was born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia.
My father’s name was Walter Shirley, and he was a teacher in the
Bolingbroke High School. My mother’s name was Bertha Shirley. Aren’t
Walter and Bertha lovely names? I’m so glad my parents had nice names.
It would be a real disgrace to have a father named--well, say Jedediah,
wouldn’t it?”

“I guess it doesn’t matter what a person’s name is as long as he behaves
himself,” said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good
and useful moral.

“Well, I don’t know.” Anne looked thoughtful. “I read in a book once
that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been
able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose _would_ be as nice if it was
called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could have been
a good man even if he had been called Jedediah; but I’m sure it would
have been a cross. Well, my mother was a teacher in the High school,
too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of course. A
husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they were
a pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to live in a
weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke. I’ve never seen that
house, but I’ve imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have
had honeysuckle over the parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and
lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in
all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air. I was born
in that house. Mrs. Thomas said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw, I
was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I
was perfectly beautiful. I should think a mother would be a better judge
than a poor woman who came in to scrub, wouldn’t you? I’m glad she
was satisfied with me anyhow, I would feel so sad if I thought I was a
disappointment to her--because she didn’t live very long after that, you
see. She died of fever when I was just three months old. I do wish she’d
lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother. I think it
would be so sweet to say ‘mother,’ don’t you? And father died four days
afterwards from fever too. That left me an orphan and folks were at
their wits’ end, so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do with me. You see,
nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate. Father and mother
had both come from places far away and it was well known they hadn’t any
relatives living. Finally Mrs. Thomas said she’d take me, though she was
poor and had a drunken husband. She brought me up by hand. Do you know
if there is anything in being brought up by hand that ought to make
people who are brought up that way better than other people? Because
whenever I was naughty Mrs. Thomas would ask me how I could be such a
bad girl when she had brought me up by hand--reproachful-like.

“Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville, and I
lived with them until I was eight years old. I helped look after the
Thomas children--there were four of them younger than me--and I can tell
you they took a lot of looking after. Then Mr. Thomas was killed
falling under a train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and the
children, but she didn’t want me. Mrs. Thomas was at _her_ wits’ end, so
she said, what to do with me. Then Mrs. Hammond from up the river came
down and said she’d take me, seeing I was handy with children, and
I went up the river to live with her in a little clearing among the
stumps. It was a very lonesome place. I’m sure I could never have
lived there if I hadn’t had an imagination. Mr. Hammond worked a little
sawmill up there, and Mrs. Hammond had eight children. She had twins
three times. I like babies in moderation, but twins three times in
succession is _too much_. I told Mrs. Hammond so firmly, when the last
pair came. I used to get so dreadfully tired carrying them about.

“I lived up river with Mrs. Hammond over two years, and then Mr. Hammond
died and Mrs. Hammond broke up housekeeping. She divided her children
among her relatives and went to the States. I had to go to the asylum
at Hopeton, because nobody would take me. They didn’t want me at the
asylum, either; they said they were over-crowded as it was. But they had
to take me and I was there four months until Mrs. Spencer came.”

Anne finished up with another sigh, of relief this time. Evidently
she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not
wanted her.

“Did you ever go to school?” demanded Marilla, turning the sorrel mare
down the shore road.

“Not a great deal. I went a little the last year I stayed with Mrs.
Thomas. When I went up river we were so far from a school that I
couldn’t walk it in winter and there was a vacation in summer, so I
could only go in the spring and fall. But of course I went while I was
at the asylum. I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of
poetry off by heart--‘The Battle of Hohenlinden’ and ‘Edinburgh after
Flodden,’ and ‘Bingen of the Rhine,’ and most of the ‘Lady of the Lake’
and most of ‘The Seasons’ by James Thompson. Don’t you just love poetry
that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a piece
in the Fifth Reader--‘The Downfall of Poland’--that is just full of
thrills. Of course, I wasn’t in the Fifth Reader--I was only in the
Fourth--but the big girls used to lend me theirs to read.”

“Were those women--Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond--good to you?” asked
Marilla, looking at Anne out of the corner of her eye.

“O-o-o-h,” faltered Anne. Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed
scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow. “Oh, they _meant_ to be--I know
they meant to be just as good and kind as possible. And when people
mean to be good to you, you don’t mind very much when they’re not
quite--always. They had a good deal to worry them, you know. It’s  a very
trying to have a drunken husband, you see; and it must be very trying to
have twins three times in succession, don’t you think? But I feel sure
they meant to be good to me.”

Marilla asked no more questions. Anne gave herself up to a silent
rapture over the shore road and Marilla guided the sorrel abstractedly
while she pondered deeply. Pity was suddenly stirring in her heart for
the child. What a starved, unloved life she had had--a life of drudgery
and poverty and neglect; for Marilla was shrewd enough to read between
the lines of Anne’s history and divine the truth. No wonder she had been
so delighted at the prospect of a real home. It was a pity she had to be
sent back. What if she, Marilla, should indulge Matthew’s unaccountable
whim and let her stay? He was set on it; and the child seemed a nice,
teachable little thing.

“She’s got too much to say,” thought Marilla, “but she might be trained
out of that. And there’s nothing rude or slangy in what she does say.
She’s ladylike. It’s likely her people were nice folks.”

The shore road was “woodsy and wild and lonesome.” On the right hand,
scrub firs, their spirits quite unbroken by long years of tussle with
the gulf winds, grew thickly. On the left were the steep red sandstone
cliffs, so near the track in places that a mare of less steadiness than
the sorrel might have tried the nerves of the people behind her. Down
at the base of the cliffs were heaps of surf-worn rocks or little sandy
coves inlaid with pebbles as with ocean jewels; beyond lay the sea,
shimmering and blue, and over it soared the gulls, their pinions
flashing silvery in the sunlight.

“Isn’t the sea wonderful?” said Anne, rousing from a long, wide-eyed
silence. “Once, when I lived in Marysville, Mr. Thomas hired an express
wagon and took us all to spend the day at the shore ten miles away.
I enjoyed every moment of that day, even if I had to look after the
children all the time. I lived it over in happy dreams for years.
But this shore is nicer than the Marysville shore. Aren’t those gulls
splendid? Would you like to be a gull? I think I would--that is, if I
couldn’t be a human girl. Don’t you think it would be nice to wake up at
sunrise and swoop down over the water and away out over that lovely blue
all day; and then at night to fly back to one’s nest? Oh, I can just
imagine myself doing it. What big house is that just ahead, please?”

“That’s the White Sands Hotel. Mr. Kirke runs it, but the season hasn’t
begun yet. There are heaps of Americans come there for the summer. They
think this shore is just about right.”

“I was afraid it might be Mrs. Spencer’s place,” said Anne mournfully.
“I don’t want to get there. Somehow, it will seem like the end of
everything.”


CHAPTER VI. Marilla Makes Up Her Mind


|GET there they did, however, in due season. Mrs. Spencer lived in a big
yellow house at White Sands Cove, and she came to the door with surprise
and welcome mingled on her benevolent face.

“Dear, dear,” she exclaimed, “you’re the last folks I was looking for
today, but I’m real glad to see you. You’ll put your horse in? And how
are you, Anne?”

“I’m as well as can be expected, thank you,” said Anne smilelessly. A
blight seemed to have descended on her.

“I suppose we’ll stay a little while to rest the mare,” said Marilla,
“but I promised Matthew I’d be home early. The fact is, Mrs. Spencer,
there’s been a queer mistake somewhere, and I’ve come over to see where
it is. We send word, Matthew and I, for you to bring us a boy from the
asylum. We told your brother Robert to tell you we wanted a boy ten or
eleven years old.”

“Marilla Cuthbert, you don’t say so!” said Mrs. Spencer in distress.
“Why, Robert sent word down by his daughter Nancy and she said you
wanted a girl--didn’t she Flora Jane?” appealing to her daughter who had
come out to the steps.

“She certainly did, Miss Cuthbert,” corroborated Flora Jane earnestly.

“I’m dreadful sorry,” said Mrs. Spencer. “It’s too bad; but it certainly
wasn’t my fault, you see, Miss Cuthbert. I did the best I could and I
thought I was following your instructions. Nancy is a terrible flighty
thing. I’ve often had to scold her well for her heedlessness.”

“It was our own fault,” said Marilla resignedly. “We should have come
to you ourselves and not left an important message to be passed along by
word of mouth in that fashion. Anyhow, the mistake has been made and the
only thing to do is to set it right. Can we send the child back to the
asylum? I suppose they’ll take her back, won’t they?”

“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Spencer thoughtfully, “but I don’t think
it will be necessary to send her back. Mrs. Peter Blewett was up here
yesterday, and she was saying to me how much she wished she’d sent by me
for a little girl to help her. Mrs. Peter has a large family, you know,
and she finds it hard to get help. Anne will be the very girl for you. I
call it positively providential.”

Marilla did not look as if she thought Providence had much to do with
the matter. Here was an unexpectedly good chance to get this unwelcome
orphan off her hands, and she did not even feel grateful for it.

She knew Mrs. Peter Blewett only by sight as a small, shrewish-faced
woman without an ounce of superfluous flesh on her bones. But she had
heard of her. “A terrible worker and driver,” Mrs. Peter was said to
be; and discharged servant girls told fearsome tales of her temper and
stinginess, and her family of pert, quarrelsome children. Marilla felt
a qualm of conscience at the thought of handing Anne over to her tender
mercies.

“Well, I’ll go in and we’ll talk the matter over,” she said.

“And if there isn’t Mrs. Peter coming up the lane this blessed minute!”
 exclaimed Mrs. Spencer, bustling her guests through the hall into the
parlor, where a deadly chill struck on them as if the air had been
strained so long through dark green, closely drawn blinds that it had
lost every particle of warmth it had ever possessed. “That is real
lucky, for we can settle the matter right away. Take the armchair, Miss
Cuthbert. Anne, you sit here on the ottoman and don’t wiggle. Let
me take your hats. Flora Jane, go out and put the kettle on. Good
afternoon, Mrs. Blewett. We were just saying how fortunate it was you
happened along. Let me introduce you two ladies. Mrs. Blewett, Miss
Cuthbert. Please excuse me for just a moment. I forgot to tell Flora
Jane to take the buns out of the oven.”

Mrs. Spencer whisked away, after pulling up the blinds. Anne sitting
mutely on the ottoman, with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, stared
at Mrs Blewett as one fascinated. Was she to be given into the keeping
of this sharp-faced, sharp-eyed woman? She felt a lump coming up in her
throat and her eyes smarted painfully. She was beginning to be afraid
she couldn’t keep the tears back when Mrs. Spencer returned, flushed
and beaming, quite capable of taking any and every difficulty, physical,
mental or spiritual, into consideration and settling it out of hand.

“It seems there’s been a mistake about this little girl, Mrs. Blewett,”
 she said. “I was under the impression that Mr. and Miss Cuthbert wanted
a little girl to adopt. I was certainly told so. But it seems it was a
boy they wanted. So if you’re still of the same mind you were yesterday,
I think she’ll be just the thing for you.”

Mrs. Blewett darted her eyes over Anne from head to foot.

“How old are you and what’s your name?” she demanded.

“Anne Shirley,” faltered the shrinking child, not daring to make any
stipulations regarding the spelling thereof, “and I’m eleven years old.”

“Humph! You don’t look as if there was much to you. But you’re wiry. I
don’t know but the wiry ones are the best after all. Well, if I take you
you’ll have to be a good girl, you know--good and smart and respectful.
I’ll expect you to earn your keep, and no mistake about that. Yes, I
suppose I might as well take her off your hands, Miss Cuthbert. The
baby’s awful fractious, and I’m clean worn out attending to him. If you
like I can take her right home now.”

Marilla looked at Anne and softened at sight of the child’s pale face
with its look of mute misery--the misery of a helpless little creature
who finds itself once more caught in the trap from which it had escaped.
Marilla felt an uncomfortable conviction that, if she denied the appeal
of that look, it would haunt her to her dying day. More-over, she did
not fancy Mrs. Blewett. To hand a sensitive, “highstrung” child over to
such a woman! No, she could not take the responsibility of doing that!

“Well, I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I didn’t say that Matthew and I
had absolutely decided that we wouldn’t keep her. In fact I may say that
Matthew is disposed to keep her. I just came over to find out how the
mistake had occurred. I think I’d better take her home again and talk it
over with Matthew. I feel that I oughtn’t to decide on anything without
consulting him. If we make up our mind not to keep her we’ll bring or
send her over to you tomorrow night. If we don’t you may know that she
is going to stay with us. Will that suit you, Mrs. Blewett?”

“I suppose it’ll have to,” said Mrs. Blewett ungraciously.

During Marilla’s speech a sunrise had been dawning on Anne’s face. First
the look of despair faded out; then came a faint flush of hope;
her eyes grew deep and bright as morning stars. The child was quite
transfigured; and, a moment later, when Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Blewett
went out in quest of a recipe the latter had come to borrow she sprang
up and flew across the room to Marilla.

“Oh, Miss Cuthbert, did you really say that perhaps you would let me
stay at Green Gables?” she said, in a breathless whisper, as if speaking
aloud might shatter the glorious possibility. “Did you really say it? Or
did I only imagine that you did?”

“I think you’d better learn to control that imagination of yours, Anne,
if you can’t distinguish between what is real and what isn’t,” said
Marilla crossly. “Yes, you did hear me say just that and no more. It
isn’t decided yet and perhaps we will conclude to let Mrs. Blewett take
you after all. She certainly needs you much more than I do.”

“I’d rather go back to the asylum than go to live with her,” said Anne
passionately. “She looks exactly like a--like a gimlet.”

Marilla smothered a smile under the conviction that Anne must be
reproved for such a speech.

“A little girl like you should be ashamed of talking so about a lady and
a stranger,” she said severely. “Go back and sit down quietly and hold
your tongue and behave as a good girl should.”

“I’ll try to do and be anything you want me, if you’ll only keep me,”
 said Anne, returning meekly to her ottoman.

When they arrived back at Green Gables that evening Matthew met them in
the lane. Marilla from afar had noted him prowling along it and guessed
his motive. She was prepared for the relief she read in his face when he
saw that she had at least brought back Anne back with her. But she said
nothing, to him, relative to the affair, until they were both out in the
yard behind the barn milking the cows. Then she briefly told him Anne’s
history and the result of the interview with Mrs. Spencer.

“I wouldn’t give a dog I liked to that Blewett woman,” said Matthew with
unusual vim.

“I don’t fancy her style myself,” admitted Marilla, “but it’s that
or keeping her ourselves, Matthew. And since you seem to want her, I
suppose I’m willing--or have to be. I’ve been thinking over the idea
until I’ve got kind of used to it. It seems a sort of duty. I’ve never
brought up a child, especially a girl, and I dare say I’ll make a
terrible mess of it. But I’ll do my best. So far as I’m concerned,
Matthew, she may stay.”

Matthew’s shy face was a glow of delight.

“Well now, I reckoned you’d come to see it in that light, Marilla,” he
said. “She’s such an interesting little thing.”

“It’d be more to the point if you could say she was a useful little
thing,” retorted Marilla, “but I’ll make it my business to see she’s
trained to be that. And mind, Matthew, you’re not to go interfering with
my methods. Perhaps an old maid doesn’t know much about bringing up
a child, but I guess she knows more than an old bachelor. So you just
leave me to manage her. When I fail it’ll be time enough to put your oar
in.”

“There, there, Marilla, you can have your own way,” said Matthew
reassuringly. “Only be as good and kind to her as you can without
spoiling her. I kind of think she’s one of the sort you can do anything
with if you only get her to love you.”

Marilla sniffed, to express her contempt for Matthew’s opinions
concerning anything feminine, and walked off to the dairy with the
pails.

“I won’t tell her tonight that she can stay,” she reflected, as she
strained the milk into the creamers. “She’d be so excited that she
wouldn’t sleep a wink. Marilla Cuthbert, you’re fairly in for it. Did
you ever suppose you’d see the day when you’d be adopting an orphan
girl? It’s surprising enough; but not so surprising as that Matthew
should be at the bottom of it, him that always seemed to have such a
mortal dread of little girls. Anyhow, we’ve decided on the experiment
and goodness only knows what will come of it.”


CHAPTER VII. Anne Says Her Prayers


|WHEN Marilla took Anne up to bed that night she said stiffly:

“Now, Anne, I noticed last night that you threw your clothes all about
the floor when you took them off. That is a very untidy habit, and I
can’t allow it at all. As soon as you take off any article of clothing
fold it neatly and place it on the chair. I haven’t any use at all for
little girls who aren’t neat.”

“I was so harrowed up in my mind last night that I didn’t think about my
clothes at all,” said Anne. “I’ll fold them nicely tonight. They always
made us do that at the asylum. Half the time, though, I’d forget, I’d be
in such a hurry to get into bed nice and quiet and imagine things.”

“You’ll have to remember a little better if you stay here,” admonished
Marilla. “There, that looks something like. Say your prayers now and get
into bed.”

“I never say any prayers,” announced Anne.

Marilla looked horrified astonishment.

“Why, Anne, what do you mean? Were you never taught to say your prayers?
God always wants little girls to say their prayers. Don’t you know who
God is, Anne?”

“‘God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in His being,
wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth,’” responded Anne
promptly and glibly.

Marilla looked rather relieved.

“So you do know something then, thank goodness! You’re not quite a
heathen. Where did you learn that?”

“Oh, at the asylum Sunday-school. They made us learn the whole
catechism. I liked it pretty well. There’s something splendid about some
of the words. ‘Infinite, eternal and unchangeable.’ Isn’t that grand? It
has such a roll to it--just like a big organ playing. You couldn’t quite
call it poetry, I suppose, but it sounds a lot like it, doesn’t it?”

“We’re not talking about poetry, Anne--we are talking about saying your
prayers. Don’t you know it’s a terrible wicked thing not to say your
prayers every night? I’m afraid you are a very bad little girl.”

“You’d find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair,” said
Anne reproachfully. “People who haven’t red hair don’t know what trouble
is. Mrs. Thomas told me that God made my hair red _on purpose_, and I’ve
never cared about Him since. And anyhow I’d always be too tired at night
to bother saying prayers. People who have to look after twins can’t be
expected to say their prayers. Now, do you honestly think they can?”

Marilla decided that Anne’s religious training must be begun at once.
Plainly there was no time to be lost.

“You must say your prayers while you are under my roof, Anne.”

“Why, of course, if you want me to,” assented Anne cheerfully. “I’d do
anything to oblige you. But you’ll have to tell me what to say for this
once. After I get into bed I’ll imagine out a real nice prayer to say
always. I believe that it will be quite interesting, now that I come to
think of it.”

“You must kneel down,” said Marilla in embarrassment.

Anne knelt at Marilla’s knee and looked up gravely.

“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll
tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone
or into the deep, deep, woods, and I’d look up into the
sky--up--up--up--into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no
end to its blueness. And then I’d just _feel_ a prayer. Well, I’m ready.
What am I to say?”

Marilla felt more embarrassed than ever. She had intended to teach Anne
the childish classic, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” But she had, as
I have told you, the glimmerings of a sense of humor--which is simply
another name for a sense of fitness of things; and it suddenly occurred
to her that that simple little prayer, sacred to white-robed childhood
lisping at motherly knees, was entirely unsuited to this freckled witch
of a girl who knew and cared nothing about God’s love, since she had
never had it translated to her through the medium of human love.

“You’re old enough to pray for yourself, Anne,” she said finally. “Just
thank God for your blessings and ask Him humbly for the things you
want.”

“Well, I’ll do my best,” promised Anne, burying her face in Marilla’s
lap. “Gracious heavenly Father--that’s the way the ministers say it in
church, so I suppose it’s all right in private prayer, isn’t it?” she
interjected, lifting her head for a moment.

   “Gracious heavenly Father, I thank Thee for the White
   Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters and Bonny
   and the Snow Queen. I’m really extremely grateful for
   them. And that’s all the blessings I can think of just
   now to thank Thee for. As for the things I want,
   they’re so numerous that it would take a great deal of
   time to name them all so I will only mention the two
   most important. Please let me stay at Green Gables;
   and please let me be good-looking when I grow up.
   I remain,
                    “Yours respectfully,
                       Anne Shirley.

“There, did I do all right?” she asked eagerly, getting up. “I could
have made it much more flowery if I’d had a little more time to think it
over.”

Poor Marilla was only preserved from complete collapse by remembering
that it was not irreverence, but simply spiritual ignorance on the part
of Anne that was responsible for this extraordinary petition. She tucked
the child up in bed, mentally vowing that she should be taught a prayer
the very next day, and was leaving the room with the light when Anne
called her back.

“I’ve just thought of it now. I should have said, ‘Amen’ in place
of ‘yours respectfully,’ shouldn’t I?--the way the ministers do. I’d
forgotten it, but I felt a prayer should be finished off in some way, so
I put in the other. Do you suppose it will make any difference?”

“I--I don’t suppose it will,” said Marilla. “Go to sleep now like a good
child. Good night.”

“I can only say good night tonight with a clear conscience,” said Anne,
cuddling luxuriously down among her pillows.

Marilla retreated to the kitchen, set the candle firmly on the table,
and glared at Matthew.

“Matthew Cuthbert, it’s about time somebody adopted that child and
taught her something. She’s next door to a perfect heathen. Will you
believe that she never said a prayer in her life till tonight? I’ll send
her to the manse tomorrow and borrow the Peep of the Day series, that’s
what I’ll do. And she shall go to Sunday-school just as soon as I can
get some suitable clothes made for her. I foresee that I shall have
my hands full. Well, well, we can’t get through this world without our
share of trouble. I’ve had a pretty easy life of it so far, but my time
has come at last and I suppose I’ll just have to make the best of it.”


CHAPTER VIII. Anne’s Bringing-up Is Begun


|FOR reasons best known to herself, Marilla did not tell Anne that
she was to stay at Green Gables until the next afternoon. During the
forenoon she kept the child busy with various tasks and watched over her
with a keen eye while she did them. By noon she had concluded that Anne
was smart and obedient, willing to work and quick to learn; her most
serious shortcoming seemed to be a tendency to fall into daydreams in
the middle of a task and forget all about it until such time as she was
sharply recalled to earth by a reprimand or a catastrophe.

When Anne had finished washing the dinner dishes she suddenly confronted
Marilla with the air and expression of one desperately determined to
learn the worst. Her thin little body trembled from head to foot; her
face flushed and her eyes dilated until they were almost black; she
clasped her hands tightly and said in an imploring voice:

“Oh, please, Miss Cuthbert, won’t you tell me if you are going to send
me away or not? I’ve tried to be patient all the morning, but I really
feel that I cannot bear not knowing any longer. It’s a dreadful feeling.
Please tell me.”

“You haven’t scalded the dishcloth in clean hot water as I told you to
do,” said Marilla immovably. “Just go and do it before you ask any more
questions, Anne.”

Anne went and attended to the dishcloth. Then she returned to Marilla
and fastened imploring eyes of the latter’s face. “Well,” said Marilla,
unable to find any excuse for deferring her explanation longer, “I
suppose I might as well tell you. Matthew and I have decided to keep
you--that is, if you will try to be a good little girl and show yourself
grateful. Why, child, whatever is the matter?”

“I’m crying,” said Anne in a tone of bewilderment. “I can’t think why.
I’m glad as glad can be. Oh, _glad_ doesn’t seem the right word at all. I
was glad about the White Way and the cherry blossoms--but this! Oh, it’s
something more than glad. I’m so happy. I’ll try to be so good. It
will be uphill work, I expect, for Mrs. Thomas often told me I was
desperately wicked. However, I’ll do my very best. But can you tell me
why I’m crying?”

“I suppose it’s because you’re all excited and worked up,” said Marilla
disapprovingly. “Sit down on that chair and try to calm yourself. I’m
afraid you both cry and laugh far too easily. Yes, you can stay here and
we will try to do right by you. You must go to school; but it’s only a
fortnight till vacation so it isn’t worth while for you to start before
it opens again in September.”

“What am I to call you?” asked Anne. “Shall I always say Miss Cuthbert?
Can I call you Aunt Marilla?”

“No; you’ll call me just plain Marilla. I’m not used to being called
Miss Cuthbert and it would make me nervous.”

“It sounds awfully disrespectful to just say Marilla,” protested Anne.

“I guess there’ll be nothing disrespectful in it if you’re careful
to speak respectfully. Everybody, young and old, in Avonlea calls me
Marilla except the minister. He says Miss Cuthbert--when he thinks of
it.”

“I’d love to call you Aunt Marilla,” said Anne wistfully. “I’ve never
had an aunt or any relation at all--not even a grandmother. It would
make me feel as if I really belonged to you. Can’t I call you Aunt
Marilla?”

“No. I’m not your aunt and I don’t believe in calling people names that
don’t belong to them.”

“But we could imagine you were my aunt.”

“I couldn’t,” said Marilla grimly.

“Do you never imagine things different from what they really are?” asked
Anne wide-eyed.

“No.”

“Oh!” Anne drew a long breath. “Oh, Miss--Marilla, how much you miss!”

“I don’t believe in imagining things different from what they really
are,” retorted Marilla. “When the Lord puts us in certain circumstances
He doesn’t mean for us to imagine them away. And that reminds me. Go
into the sitting room, Anne--be sure your feet are clean and don’t
let any flies in--and bring me out the illustrated card that’s on the
mantelpiece. The Lord’s Prayer is on it and you’ll devote your spare
time this afternoon to learning it off by heart. There’s to be no more
of such praying as I heard last night.”

“I suppose I was very awkward,” said Anne apologetically, “but then, you
see, I’d never had any practice. You couldn’t really expect a person
to pray very well the first time she tried, could you? I thought out a
splendid prayer after I went to bed, just as I promised you I would.
It was nearly as long as a minister’s and so poetical. But would you
believe it? I couldn’t remember one word when I woke up this morning.
And I’m afraid I’ll never be able to think out another one as good.
Somehow, things never are so good when they’re thought out a second
time. Have you ever noticed that?”

“Here is something for you to notice, Anne. When I tell you to do
a thing I want you to obey me at once and not stand stock-still and
discourse about it. Just you go and do as I bid you.”

Anne promptly departed for the sitting-room across the hall; she failed
to return; after waiting ten minutes Marilla laid down her knitting
and marched after her with a grim expression. She found Anne standing
motionless before a picture hanging on the wall between the two windows,
with her eyes a-star with dreams. The white and green light strained
through apple trees and clustering vines outside fell over the rapt
little figure with a half-unearthly radiance.

“Anne, whatever are you thinking of?” demanded Marilla sharply.

Anne came back to earth with a start.

“That,” she said, pointing to the picture--a rather vivid chromo
entitled, “Christ Blessing Little Children”--“and I was just imagining I
was one of them--that I was the little girl in the blue dress, standing
off by herself in the corner as if she didn’t belong to anybody, like
me. She looks lonely and sad, don’t you think? I guess she hadn’t any
father or mother of her own. But she wanted to be blessed, too, so she
just crept shyly up on the outside of the crowd, hoping nobody would
notice her--except Him. I’m sure I know just how she felt. Her heart
must have beat and her hands must have got cold, like mine did when I
asked you if I could stay. She was afraid He mightn’t notice her. But
it’s likely He did, don’t you think? I’ve been trying to imagine it all
out--her edging a little nearer all the time until she was quite close
to Him; and then He would look at her and put His hand on her hair and
oh, such a thrill of joy as would run over her! But I wish the artist
hadn’t painted Him so sorrowful looking. All His pictures are like that,
if you’ve noticed. But I don’t believe He could really have looked so
sad or the children would have been afraid of Him.”

“Anne,” said Marilla, wondering why she had not broken into this speech
long before, “you shouldn’t talk that way. It’s irreverent--positively
irreverent.”

Anne’s eyes marveled.

“Why, I felt just as reverent as could be. I’m sure I didn’t mean to be
irreverent.”

“Well I don’t suppose you did--but it doesn’t sound right to talk so
familiarly about such things. And another thing, Anne, when I send you
after something you’re to bring it at once and not fall into mooning and
imagining before pictures. Remember that. Take that card and come right
to the kitchen. Now, sit down in the corner and learn that prayer off by
heart.”

Anne set the card up against the jugful of apple blossoms she had
brought in to decorate the dinner-table--Marilla had eyed that
decoration askance, but had said nothing--propped her chin on her hands,
and fell to studying it intently for several silent minutes.

“I like this,” she announced at length. “It’s beautiful. I’ve heard it
before--I heard the superintendent of the asylum Sunday school say it
over once. But I didn’t like it then. He had such a cracked voice and
he prayed it so mournfully. I really felt sure he thought praying was a
disagreeable duty. This isn’t poetry, but it makes me feel just the same
way poetry does. ‘Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be Thy name.’
That is just like a line of music. Oh, I’m so glad you thought of making
me learn this, Miss--Marilla.”

“Well, learn it and hold your tongue,” said Marilla shortly.

Anne tipped the vase of apple blossoms near enough to bestow a soft
kiss on a pink-cupped bud, and then studied diligently for some moments
longer.

“Marilla,” she demanded presently, “do you think that I shall ever have
a bosom friend in Avonlea?”

“A--a what kind of friend?”

“A bosom friend--an intimate friend, you know--a really kindred spirit
to whom I can confide my inmost soul. I’ve dreamed of meeting her all
my life. I never really supposed I would, but so many of my loveliest
dreams have come true all at once that perhaps this one will, too. Do
you think it’s possible?”

“Diana Barry lives over at Orchard Slope and she’s about your age. She’s
a very nice little girl, and perhaps she will be a playmate for you when
she comes home. She’s visiting her aunt over at Carmody just now. You’ll
have to be careful how you behave yourself, though. Mrs. Barry is a
very particular woman. She won’t let Diana play with any little girl who
isn’t nice and good.”

Anne looked at Marilla through the apple blossoms, her eyes aglow with
interest.

“What is Diana like? Her hair isn’t red, is it? Oh, I hope not. It’s bad
enough to have red hair myself, but I positively couldn’t endure it in a
bosom friend.”

“Diana is a very pretty little girl. She has black eyes and hair and
rosy cheeks. And she is good and smart, which is better than being
pretty.”

Marilla was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was
firmly convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a
child who was being brought up.

But Anne waved the moral inconsequently aside and seized only on the
delightful possibilities before it.

“Oh, I’m so glad she’s pretty. Next to being beautiful oneself--and
that’s impossible in my case--it would be best to have a beautiful bosom
friend. When I lived with Mrs. Thomas she had a bookcase in her sitting
room with glass doors. There weren’t any books in it; Mrs. Thomas kept
her best china and her preserves there--when she had any preserves to
keep. One of the doors was broken. Mr. Thomas smashed it one night
when he was slightly intoxicated. But the other was whole and I used to
pretend that my reflection in it was another little girl who lived in
it. I called her Katie Maurice, and we were very intimate. I used to
talk to her by the hour, especially on Sunday, and tell her everything.
Katie was the comfort and consolation of my life. We used to pretend
that the bookcase was enchanted and that if I only knew the spell I
could open the door and step right into the room where Katie Maurice
lived, instead of into Mrs. Thomas’ shelves of preserves and china. And
then Katie Maurice would have taken me by the hand and led me out into a
wonderful place, all flowers and sunshine and fairies, and we would have
lived there happy for ever after. When I went to live with Mrs. Hammond
it just broke my heart to leave Katie Maurice. She felt it dreadfully,
too, I know she did, for she was crying when she kissed me good-bye
through the bookcase door. There was no bookcase at Mrs. Hammond’s. But
just up the river a little way from the house there was a long green
little valley, and the loveliest echo lived there. It echoed back every
word you said, even if you didn’t talk a bit loud. So I imagined that it
was a little girl called Violetta and we were great friends and I loved
her almost as well as I loved Katie Maurice--not quite, but almost, you
know. The night before I went to the asylum I said good-bye to Violetta,
and oh, her good-bye came back to me in such sad, sad tones. I had
become so attached to her that I hadn’t the heart to imagine a bosom
friend at the asylum, even if there had been any scope for imagination
there.”

“I think it’s just as well there wasn’t,” said Marilla drily. “I
don’t approve of such goings-on. You seem to half believe your own
imaginations. It will be well for you to have a real live friend to
put such nonsense out of your head. But don’t let Mrs. Barry hear you
talking about your Katie Maurices and your Violettas or she’ll think you
tell stories.”

“Oh, I won’t. I couldn’t talk of them to everybody--their memories are
too sacred for that. But I thought I’d like to have you know about them.
Oh, look, here’s a big bee just tumbled out of an apple blossom. Just
think what a lovely place to live--in an apple blossom! Fancy going to
sleep in it when the wind was rocking it. If I wasn’t a human girl I
think I’d like to be a bee and live among the flowers.”

“Yesterday you wanted to be a sea gull,” sniffed Marilla. “I think you
are very fickle minded. I told you to learn that prayer and not talk.
But it seems impossible for you to stop talking if you’ve got anybody
that will listen to you. So go up to your room and learn it.”

“Oh, I know it pretty nearly all now--all but just the last line.”

“Well, never mind, do as I tell you. Go to your room and finish learning
it well, and stay there until I call you down to help me get tea.”

“Can I take the apple blossoms with me for company?” pleaded Anne.

“No; you don’t want your room cluttered up with flowers. You should have
left them on the tree in the first place.”

“I did feel a little that way, too,” said Anne. “I kind of felt I
shouldn’t shorten their lovely lives by picking them--I wouldn’t want
to be picked if I were an apple blossom. But the temptation was
_irresistible_. What do you do when you meet with an irresistible
temptation?”

“Anne, did you hear me tell you to go to your room?”

Anne sighed, retreated to the east gable, and sat down in a chair by the
window.

“There--I know this prayer. I learned that last sentence coming
upstairs. Now I’m going to imagine things into this room so that they’ll
always stay imagined. The floor is covered with a white velvet carpet
with pink roses all over it and there are pink silk curtains at the
windows. The walls are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry. The
furniture is mahogany. I never saw any mahogany, but it does sound _so_
luxurious. This is a couch all heaped with gorgeous silken cushions,
pink and blue and crimson and gold, and I am reclining gracefully on it.
I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall.
I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a
pearl cross on my breast and pearls in my hair. My hair is of midnight
darkness and my skin is a clear ivory pallor. My name is the Lady
Cordelia Fitzgerald. No, it isn’t--I can’t make _that_ seem real.”

She danced up to the little looking-glass and peered into it. Her
pointed freckled face and solemn gray eyes peered back at her.

“You’re only Anne of Green Gables,” she said earnestly, “and I see you,
just as you are looking now, whenever I try to imagine I’m the Lady
Cordelia. But it’s a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables than
Anne of nowhere in particular, isn’t it?”

She bent forward, kissed her reflection affectionately, and betook
herself to the open window.


“Dear Snow Queen, good afternoon. And good afternoon dear birches down
in the hollow. And good afternoon, dear gray house up on the hill. I
wonder if Diana is to be my bosom friend. I hope she will, and I shall
love her very much. But I must never quite forget Katie Maurice
and Violetta. They would feel so hurt if I did and I’d hate to hurt
anybody’s feelings, even a little bookcase girl’s or a little echo
girl’s. I must be careful to remember them and send them a kiss every
day.”

Anne blew a couple of airy kisses from her fingertips past the cherry
blossoms and then, with her chin in her hands, drifted luxuriously out
on a sea of daydreams.


CHAPTER IX. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified


|ANNE had been a fortnight at Green Gables before Mrs. Lynde arrived to
inspect her. Mrs. Rachel, to do her justice, was not to blame for this.
A severe and unseasonable attack of grippe had confined that good lady
to her house ever since the occasion of her last visit to Green Gables.
Mrs. Rachel was not often sick and had a well-defined contempt for
people who were; but grippe, she asserted, was like no other illness on
earth and could only be interpreted as one of the special visitations
of Providence. As soon as her doctor allowed her to put her foot
out-of-doors she hurried up to Green Gables, bursting with curiosity to
see Matthew and Marilla’s orphan, concerning whom all sorts of stories
and suppositions had gone abroad in Avonlea.

Anne had made good use of every waking moment of that fortnight. Already
she was acquainted with every tree and shrub about the place. She had
discovered that a lane opened out below the apple orchard and ran up
through a belt of woodland; and she had explored it to its furthest end
in all its delicious vagaries of brook and bridge, fir coppice and wild
cherry arch, corners thick with fern, and branching byways of maple and
mountain ash.

She had made friends with the spring down in the hollow--that wonderful
deep, clear icy-cold spring; it was set about with smooth red sandstones
and rimmed in by great palm-like clumps of water fern; and beyond it was
a log bridge over the brook.

That bridge led Anne’s dancing feet up over a wooded hill beyond, where
perpetual twilight reigned under the straight, thick-growing firs and
spruces; the only flowers there were myriads of delicate “June bells,”
 those shyest and sweetest of woodland blooms, and a few pale, aerial
starflowers, like the spirits of last year’s blossoms. Gossamers
glimmered like threads of silver among the trees and the fir boughs and
tassels seemed to utter friendly speech.

All these raptured voyages of exploration were made in the odd half
hours which she was allowed for play, and Anne talked Matthew and
Marilla half-deaf over her discoveries. Not that Matthew complained, to
be sure; he listened to it all with a wordless smile of enjoyment on his
face; Marilla permitted the “chatter” until she found herself becoming
too interested in it, whereupon she always promptly quenched Anne by a
curt command to hold her tongue.

Anne was out in the orchard when Mrs. Rachel came, wandering at her
own sweet will through the lush, tremulous grasses splashed with ruddy
evening sunshine; so that good lady had an excellent chance to talk
her illness fully over, describing every ache and pulse beat with
such evident enjoyment that Marilla thought even grippe must bring its
compensations. When details were exhausted Mrs. Rachel introduced the
real reason of her call.

“I’ve been hearing some surprising things about you and Matthew.”

“I don’t suppose you are any more surprised than I am myself,” said
Marilla. “I’m getting over my surprise now.”

“It was too bad there was such a mistake,” said Mrs. Rachel
sympathetically. “Couldn’t you have sent her back?”

“I suppose we could, but we decided not to. Matthew took a fancy to her.
And I must say I like her myself--although I admit she has her faults.
The house seems a different place already. She’s a real bright little
thing.”

Marilla said more than she had intended to say when she began, for she
read disapproval in Mrs. Rachel’s expression.

“It’s a great responsibility you’ve taken on yourself,” said that
lady gloomily, “especially when you’ve never had any experience with
children. You don’t know much about her or her real disposition, I
suppose, and there’s no guessing how a child like that will turn out.
But I don’t want to discourage you I’m sure, Marilla.”

“I’m not feeling discouraged,” was Marilla’s dry response, “when I make
up my mind to do a thing it stays made up. I suppose you’d like to see
Anne. I’ll call her in.”

Anne came running in presently, her face sparkling with the delight of
her orchard rovings; but, abashed at finding the delight herself in
the unexpected presence of a stranger, she halted confusedly inside
the door. She certainly was an odd-looking little creature in the short
tight wincey dress she had worn from the asylum, below which her thin
legs seemed ungracefully long. Her freckles were more numerous and
obtrusive than ever; the wind had ruffled her hatless hair into
over-brilliant disorder; it had never looked redder than at that moment.

“Well, they didn’t pick you for your looks, that’s sure and certain,”
 was Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s emphatic comment. Mrs. Rachel was one of those
delightful and popular people who pride themselves on speaking their
mind without fear or favor. “She’s terrible skinny and homely, Marilla.
Come here, child, and let me have a look at you. Lawful heart, did
any one ever see such freckles? And hair as red as carrots! Come here,
child, I say.”

Anne “came there,” but not exactly as Mrs. Rachel expected. With one
bound she crossed the kitchen floor and stood before Mrs. Rachel, her
face scarlet with anger, her lips quivering, and her whole slender form
trembling from head to foot.

“I hate you,” she cried in a choked voice, stamping her foot on the
floor. “I hate you--I hate you--I hate you--” a louder stamp with each
assertion of hatred. “How dare you call me skinny and ugly? How dare
you say I’m freckled and redheaded? You are a rude, impolite, unfeeling
woman!”

“Anne!” exclaimed Marilla in consternation.

But Anne continued to face Mrs. Rachel undauntedly, head up, eyes
blazing, hands clenched, passionate indignation exhaling from her like
an atmosphere.

“How dare you say such things about me?” she repeated vehemently. “How
would you like to have such things said about you? How would you like
to be told that you are fat and clumsy and probably hadn’t a spark of
imagination in you? I don’t care if I do hurt your feelings by saying
so! I hope I hurt them. You have hurt mine worse than they were ever
hurt before even by Mrs. Thomas’ intoxicated husband. And I’ll _never_
forgive you for it, never, never!”

Stamp! Stamp!

“Did anybody ever see such a temper!” exclaimed the horrified Mrs.
Rachel.

“Anne go to your room and stay there until I come up,” said Marilla,
recovering her powers of speech with difficulty.

Anne, bursting into tears, rushed to the hall door, slammed it until the
tins on the porch wall outside rattled in sympathy, and fled through the
hall and up the stairs like a whirlwind. A subdued slam above told that
the door of the east gable had been shut with equal vehemence.

“Well, I don’t envy you your job bringing _that_ up, Marilla,” said Mrs.
Rachel with unspeakable solemnity.

Marilla opened her lips to say she knew not what of apology or
deprecation. What she did say was a surprise to herself then and ever
afterwards.

“You shouldn’t have twitted her about her looks, Rachel.”

“Marilla Cuthbert, you don’t mean to say that you are upholding her in
such a terrible display of temper as we’ve just seen?” demanded Mrs.
Rachel indignantly.

“No,” said Marilla slowly, “I’m not trying to excuse her. She’s been
very naughty and I’ll have to give her a talking to about it. But we
must make allowances for her. She’s never been taught what is right. And
you _were_ too hard on her, Rachel.”

Marilla could not help tacking on that last sentence, although she was
again surprised at herself for doing it. Mrs. Rachel got up with an air
of offended dignity.

“Well, I see that I’ll have to be very careful what I say after this,
Marilla, since the fine feelings of orphans, brought from goodness
knows where, have to be considered before anything else. Oh, no, I’m not
vexed--don’t worry yourself. I’m too sorry for you to leave any room for
anger in my mind. You’ll have your own troubles with that child. But
if you’ll take my advice--which I suppose you won’t do, although I’ve
brought up ten children and buried two--you’ll do that ‘talking to’ you
mention with a fair-sized birch switch. I should think _that_ would be the
most effective language for that kind of a child. Her temper matches her
hair I guess. Well, good evening, Marilla. I hope you’ll come down to
see me often as usual. But you can’t expect me to visit here again in a
hurry, if I’m liable to be flown at and insulted in such a fashion. It’s
something new in _my_ experience.”

Whereat Mrs. Rachel swept out and away--if a fat woman who always
waddled _could_ be said to sweep away--and Marilla with a very solemn face
betook herself to the east gable.

On the way upstairs she pondered uneasily as to what she ought to do.
She felt no little dismay over the scene that had just been enacted.
How unfortunate that Anne should have displayed such temper before Mrs.
Rachel Lynde, of all people! Then Marilla suddenly became aware of an
uncomfortable and rebuking consciousness that she felt more humiliation
over this than sorrow over the discovery of such a serious defect
in Anne’s disposition. And how was she to punish her? The amiable
suggestion of the birch switch--to the efficiency of which all of Mrs.
Rachel’s own children could have borne smarting testimony--did not
appeal to Marilla. She did not believe she could whip a child. No,
some other method of punishment must be found to bring Anne to a proper
realization of the enormity of her offense.

Marilla found Anne face downward on her bed, crying bitterly, quite
oblivious of muddy boots on a clean counterpane.

“Anne,” she said not ungently.

No answer.

“Anne,” with greater severity, “get off that bed this minute and listen
to what I have to say to you.”

Anne squirmed off the bed and sat rigidly on a chair beside it, her face
swollen and tear-stained and her eyes fixed stubbornly on the floor.

“This is a nice way for you to behave. Anne! Aren’t you ashamed of
yourself?”

“She hadn’t any right to call me ugly and redheaded,” retorted Anne,
evasive and defiant.

“You hadn’t any right to fly into such a fury and talk the way you did
to her, Anne. I was ashamed of you--thoroughly ashamed of you. I
wanted you to behave nicely to Mrs. Lynde, and instead of that you have
disgraced me. I’m sure I don’t know why you should lose your temper like
that just because Mrs. Lynde said you were red-haired and homely. You
say it yourself often enough.”

“Oh, but there’s such a difference between saying a thing yourself and
hearing other people say it,” wailed Anne. “You may know a thing is
so, but you can’t help hoping other people don’t quite think it is. I
suppose you think I have an awful temper, but I couldn’t help it. When
she said those things something just rose right up in me and choked me.
I _had_ to fly out at her.”

“Well, you made a fine exhibition of yourself I must say. Mrs. Lynde
will have a nice story to tell about you everywhere--and she’ll tell
it, too. It was a dreadful thing for you to lose your temper like that,
Anne.”

“Just imagine how you would feel if somebody told you to your face that
you were skinny and ugly,” pleaded Anne tearfully.

An old remembrance suddenly rose up before Marilla. She had been a very
small child when she had heard one aunt say of her to another, “What a
pity she is such a dark, homely little thing.” Marilla was every day of
fifty before the sting had gone out of that memory.

“I don’t say that I think Mrs. Lynde was exactly right in saying what
she did to you, Anne,” she admitted in a softer tone. “Rachel is too
outspoken. But that is no excuse for such behavior on your part. She
was a stranger and an elderly person and my visitor--all three very good
reasons why you should have been respectful to her. You were rude and
saucy and”--Marilla had a saving inspiration of punishment--“you must go
to her and tell her you are very sorry for your bad temper and ask her
to forgive you.”

“I can never do that,” said Anne determinedly and darkly. “You can
punish me in any way you like, Marilla. You can shut me up in a dark,
damp dungeon inhabited by snakes and toads and feed me only on bread and
water and I shall not complain. But I cannot ask Mrs. Lynde to forgive
me.”

“We’re not in the habit of shutting people up in dark damp dungeons,”
 said Marilla drily, “especially as they’re rather scarce in Avonlea. But
apologize to Mrs. Lynde you must and shall and you’ll stay here in your
room until you can tell me you’re willing to do it.”

“I shall have to stay here forever then,” said Anne mournfully, “because
I can’t tell Mrs. Lynde I’m sorry I said those things to her. How can
I? I’m _not_ sorry. I’m sorry I’ve vexed you; but I’m _glad_ I told her just
what I did. It was a great satisfaction. I can’t say I’m sorry when I’m
not, can I? I can’t even _imagine_ I’m sorry.”

“Perhaps your imagination will be in better working order by the
morning,” said Marilla, rising to depart. “You’ll have the night to
think over your conduct in and come to a better frame of mind. You said
you would try to be a very good girl if we kept you at Green Gables, but
I must say it hasn’t seemed very much like it this evening.”

Leaving this Parthian shaft to rankle in Anne’s stormy bosom, Marilla
descended to the kitchen, grievously troubled in mind and vexed in
soul. She was as angry with herself as with Anne, because, whenever she
recalled Mrs. Rachel’s dumbfounded countenance her lips twitched with
amusement and she felt a most reprehensible desire to laugh.


CHAPTER X. Anne’s Apology


|MARILLA said nothing to Matthew about the affair that evening; but when
Anne proved still refractory the next morning an explanation had to be
made to account for her absence from the breakfast table. Marilla told
Matthew the whole story, taking pains to impress him with a due sense of
the enormity of Anne’s behavior.

“It’s a good thing Rachel Lynde got a calling down; she’s a meddlesome
old gossip,” was Matthew’s consolatory rejoinder.

“Matthew Cuthbert, I’m astonished at you. You know that Anne’s behavior
was dreadful, and yet you take her part! I suppose you’ll be saying next
thing that she oughtn’t to be punished at all!”

“Well now--no--not exactly,” said Matthew uneasily. “I reckon she
ought to be punished a little. But don’t be too hard on her, Marilla.
Recollect she hasn’t ever had anyone to teach her right. You’re--you’re
going to give her something to eat, aren’t you?”

“When did you ever hear of me starving people into good behavior?”
 demanded Marilla indignantly. “She’ll have her meals regular, and
I’ll carry them up to her myself. But she’ll stay up there until she’s
willing to apologize to Mrs. Lynde, and that’s final, Matthew.”

Breakfast, dinner, and supper were very silent meals--for Anne still
remained obdurate. After each meal Marilla carried a well-filled tray
to the east gable and brought it down later on not noticeably depleted.
Matthew eyed its last descent with a troubled eye. Had Anne eaten
anything at all?

When Marilla went out that evening to bring the cows from the back
pasture, Matthew, who had been hanging about the barns and watching,
slipped into the house with the air of a burglar and crept upstairs. As
a general thing Matthew gravitated between the kitchen and the little
bedroom off the hall where he slept; once in a while he ventured
uncomfortably into the parlor or sitting room when the minister came to
tea. But he had never been upstairs in his own house since the spring he
helped Marilla paper the spare bedroom, and that was four years ago.

He tiptoed along the hall and stood for several minutes outside the
door of the east gable before he summoned courage to tap on it with his
fingers and then open the door to peep in.

Anne was sitting on the yellow chair by the window gazing mournfully out
into the garden. Very small and unhappy she looked, and Matthew’s heart
smote him. He softly closed the door and tiptoed over to her.

“Anne,” he whispered, as if afraid of being overheard, “how are you
making it, Anne?”

Anne smiled wanly.

“Pretty well. I imagine a good deal, and that helps to pass the time. Of
course, it’s rather lonesome. But then, I may as well get used to that.”

Anne smiled again, bravely facing the long years of solitary
imprisonment before her.

Matthew recollected that he must say what he had come to say without
loss of time, lest Marilla return prematurely. “Well now, Anne, don’t
you think you’d better do it and have it over with?” he whispered.
“It’ll have to be done sooner or later, you know, for Marilla’s a
dreadful deter-mined woman--dreadful determined, Anne. Do it right off,
I say, and have it over.”

“Do you mean apologize to Mrs. Lynde?”

“Yes--apologize--that’s the very word,” said Matthew eagerly. “Just
smooth it over so to speak. That’s what I was trying to get at.”

“I suppose I could do it to oblige you,” said Anne thoughtfully. “It
would be true enough to say I am sorry, because I _am_ sorry now. I wasn’t
a bit sorry last night. I was mad clear through, and I stayed mad all
night. I know I did because I woke up three times and I was just
furious every time. But this morning it was over. I wasn’t in a temper
anymore--and it left a dreadful sort of goneness, too. I felt so ashamed
of myself. But I just couldn’t think of going and telling Mrs. Lynde
so. It would be so humiliating. I made up my mind I’d stay shut up here
forever rather than do that. But still--I’d do anything for you--if you
really want me to--”

“Well now, of course I do. It’s terrible lonesome downstairs without
you. Just go and smooth things over--that’s a good girl.”

“Very well,” said Anne resignedly. “I’ll tell Marilla as soon as she
comes in I’ve repented.”

“That’s right--that’s right, Anne. But don’t tell Marilla I said
anything about it. She might think I was putting my oar in and I
promised not to do that.”

“Wild horses won’t drag the secret from me,” promised Anne solemnly.
“How would wild horses drag a secret from a person anyhow?”

But Matthew was gone, scared at his own success. He fled hastily to the
remotest corner of the horse pasture lest Marilla should suspect what
he had been up to. Marilla herself, upon her return to the house, was
agreeably surprised to hear a plaintive voice calling, “Marilla” over
the banisters.

“Well?” she said, going into the hall.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper and said rude things, and I’m willing to go
and tell Mrs. Lynde so.”

“Very well.” Marilla’s crispness gave no sign of her relief. She had
been wondering what under the canopy she should do if Anne did not give
in. “I’ll take you down after milking.”

Accordingly, after milking, behold Marilla and Anne walking down the
lane, the former erect and triumphant, the latter drooping and dejected.
But halfway down Anne’s dejection vanished as if by enchantment. She
lifted her head and stepped lightly along, her eyes fixed on the sunset
sky and an air of subdued exhilaration about her. Marilla beheld the
change disapprovingly. This was no meek penitent such as it behooved her
to take into the presence of the offended Mrs. Lynde.

“What are you thinking of, Anne?” she asked sharply.

“I’m imagining out what I must say to Mrs. Lynde,” answered Anne
dreamily.

This was satisfactory--or should have been so. But Marilla could not
rid herself of the notion that something in her scheme of punishment was
going askew. Anne had no business to look so rapt and radiant.

Rapt and radiant Anne continued until they were in the very presence
of Mrs. Lynde, who was sitting knitting by her kitchen window. Then the
radiance vanished. Mournful penitence appeared on every feature. Before
a word was spoken Anne suddenly went down on her knees before the
astonished Mrs. Rachel and held out her hands beseechingly.

“Oh, Mrs. Lynde, I am so extremely sorry,” she said with a quiver in
her voice. “I could never express all my sorrow, no, not if I used up
a whole dictionary. You must just imagine it. I behaved terribly to
you--and I’ve disgraced the dear friends, Matthew and Marilla, who have
let me stay at Green Gables although I’m not a boy. I’m a dreadfully
wicked and ungrateful girl, and I deserve to be punished and cast out
by respectable people forever. It was very wicked of me to fly into a
temper because you told me the truth. It _was_ the truth; every word you
said was true. My hair is red and I’m freckled and skinny and ugly.
What I said to you was true, too, but I shouldn’t have said it. Oh, Mrs.
Lynde, please, please, forgive me. If you refuse it will be a lifelong
sorrow on a poor little orphan girl, would you, even if she had a
dreadful temper? Oh, I am sure you wouldn’t. Please say you forgive me,
Mrs. Lynde.”

Anne clasped her hands together, bowed her head, and waited for the word
of judgment.

There was no mistaking her sincerity--it breathed in every tone of her
voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring.
But the former under-stood in dismay that Anne was actually enjoying
her valley of humiliation--was reveling in the thoroughness of her
abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which she, Marilla,
had plumed herself? Anne had turned it into a species of positive
pleasure.

Good Mrs. Lynde, not being overburdened with perception, did not see
this. She only perceived that Anne had made a very thorough apology and
all resentment vanished from her kindly, if somewhat officious, heart.

“There, there, get up, child,” she said heartily. “Of course I forgive
you. I guess I was a little too hard on you, anyway. But I’m such an
outspoken person. You just mustn’t mind me, that’s what. It can’t be
denied your hair is terrible red; but I knew a girl once--went to school
with her, in fact--whose hair was every mite as red as yours when she
was young, but when she grew up it darkened to a real handsome auburn. I
wouldn’t be a mite surprised if yours did, too--not a mite.”

“Oh, Mrs. Lynde!” Anne drew a long breath as she rose to her feet. “You
have given me a hope. I shall always feel that you are a benefactor. Oh,
I could endure anything if I only thought my hair would be a handsome
auburn when I grew up. It would be so much easier to be good if one’s
hair was a handsome auburn, don’t you think? And now may I go out into
your garden and sit on that bench under the apple-trees while you and
Marilla are talking? There is so much more scope for imagination out
there.”

“Laws, yes, run along, child. And you can pick a bouquet of them white
June lilies over in the corner if you like.”

As the door closed behind Anne Mrs. Lynde got briskly up to light a
lamp.

“She’s a real odd little thing. Take this chair, Marilla; it’s easier
than the one you’ve got; I just keep that for the hired boy to sit
on. Yes, she certainly is an odd child, but there is something kind of
taking about her after all. I don’t feel so surprised at you and Matthew
keeping her as I did--nor so sorry for you, either. She may turn out all
right. Of course, she has a queer way of expressing herself--a little
too--well, too kind of forcible, you know; but she’ll likely get over
that now that she’s come to live among civilized folks. And then, her
temper’s pretty quick, I guess; but there’s one comfort, a child that
has a quick temper, just blaze up and cool down, ain’t never likely to
be sly or deceitful. Preserve me from a sly child, that’s what. On the
whole, Marilla, I kind of like her.”

When Marilla went home Anne came out of the fragrant twilight of the
orchard with a sheaf of white narcissi in her hands.

“I apologized pretty well, didn’t I?” she said proudly as they went
down the lane. “I thought since I had to do it I might as well do it
thoroughly.”

“You did it thoroughly, all right enough,” was Marilla’s comment.
Marilla was dismayed at finding herself inclined to laugh over the
recollection. She had also an uneasy feeling that she ought to scold
Anne for apologizing so well; but then, that was ridiculous! She
compromised with her conscience by saying severely:

“I hope you won’t have occasion to make many more such apologies. I hope
you’ll try to control your temper now, Anne.”

“That wouldn’t be so hard if people wouldn’t twit me about my looks,”
 said Anne with a sigh. “I don’t get cross about other things; but I’m
_so_ tired of being twitted about my hair and it just makes me boil right
over. Do you suppose my hair will really be a handsome auburn when I
grow up?”

“You shouldn’t think so much about your looks, Anne. I’m afraid you are
a very vain little girl.”

“How can I be vain when I know I’m homely?” protested Anne. “I love
pretty things; and I hate to look in the glass and see something that
isn’t pretty. It makes me feel so sorrowful--just as I feel when I look
at any ugly thing. I pity it because it isn’t beautiful.”

“Handsome is as handsome does,” quoted Marilla. “I’ve had that said
to me before, but I have my doubts about it,” remarked skeptical Anne,
sniffing at her narcissi. “Oh, aren’t these flowers sweet! It was lovely
of Mrs. Lynde to give them to me. I have no hard feelings against Mrs.
Lynde now. It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologize and
be forgiven, doesn’t it? Aren’t the stars bright tonight? If you could
live in a star, which one would you pick? I’d like that lovely clear big
one away over there above that dark hill.”

“Anne, do hold your tongue,” said Marilla, thoroughly worn out trying to
follow the gyrations of Anne’s thoughts.

Anne said no more until they turned into their own lane. A little gypsy
wind came down it to meet them, laden with the spicy perfume of young
dew-wet ferns. Far up in the shadows a cheerful light gleamed out
through the trees from the kitchen at Green Gables. Anne suddenly came
close to Marilla and slipped her hand into the older woman’s hard palm.

“It’s lovely to be going home and know it’s home,” she said. “I love
Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before. No place ever
seemed like home. Oh, Marilla, I’m so happy. I could pray right now and
not find it a bit hard.”

Something warm and pleasant welled up in Marilla’s heart at touch of
that thin little hand in her own--a throb of the maternity she had
missed, perhaps. Its very unaccustomedness and sweetness disturbed
her. She hastened to restore her sensations to their normal calm by
inculcating a moral.

“If you’ll be a good girl you’ll always be happy, Anne. And you should
never find it hard to say your prayers.”

“Saying one’s prayers isn’t exactly the same thing as praying,” said
Anne meditatively. “But I’m going to imagine that I’m the wind that is
blowing up there in those tree tops. When I get tired of the trees I’ll
imagine I’m gently waving down here in the ferns--and then I’ll fly over
to Mrs. Lynde’s garden and set the flowers dancing--and then I’ll go
with one great swoop over the clover field--and then I’ll blow over the
Lake of Shining Waters and ripple it all up into little sparkling waves.
Oh, there’s so much scope for imagination in a wind! So I’ll not talk
any more just now, Marilla.”

“Thanks be to goodness for that,” breathed Marilla in devout relief.


CHAPTER XI. Anne’s Impressions of Sunday-School


|WELL, how do you like them?” said Marilla.

Anne was standing in the gable room, looking solemnly at three new
dresses spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which
Marilla had been tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer
because it looked so serviceable; one was of black-and-white checkered
sateen which she had picked up at a bargain counter in the winter; and
one was a stiff print of an ugly blue shade which she had purchased that
week at a Carmody store.

She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike--plain skirts
fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and skirt
and tight as sleeves could be.

“I’ll imagine that I like them,” said Anne soberly.

“I don’t want you to imagine it,” said Marilla, offended. “Oh, I can see
you don’t like the dresses! What is the matter with them? Aren’t they
neat and clean and new?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you like them?”

“They’re--they’re not--pretty,” said Anne reluctantly.

“Pretty!” Marilla sniffed. “I didn’t trouble my head about getting
pretty dresses for you. I don’t believe in pampering vanity, Anne, I’ll
tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable
dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they’re all
you’ll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do
you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and Sunday
school. I’ll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to tear
them. I should think you’d be grateful to get most anything after those
skimpy wincey things you’ve been wearing.”

“Oh, I _am_ grateful,” protested Anne. “But I’d be ever so much
gratefuller if--if you’d made just one of them with puffed sleeves.
Puffed sleeves are so fashionable now. It would give me such a thrill,
Marilla, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves.”

“Well, you’ll have to do without your thrill. I hadn’t any material
to waste on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things
anyhow. I prefer the plain, sensible ones.”

“But I’d rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and
sensible all by myself,” persisted Anne mournfully.

“Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your
closet, and then sit down and learn the Sunday school lesson. I got
a quarterly from Mr. Bell for you and you’ll go to Sunday school
tomorrow,” said Marilla, disappearing downstairs in high dudgeon.

Anne clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.

“I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves,” she
whispered disconsolately. “I prayed for one, but I didn’t much expect it
on that account. I didn’t suppose God would have time to bother about
a little orphan girl’s dress. I knew I’d just have to depend on
Marilla for it. Well, fortunately I can imagine that one of them is of
snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and three-puffed sleeves.”

The next morning warnings of a sick headache prevented Marilla from
going to Sunday-school with Anne.

“You’ll have to go down and call for Mrs. Lynde, Anne,” she said.
“She’ll see that you get into the right class. Now, mind you behave
yourself properly. Stay to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Lynde to
show you our pew. Here’s a cent for collection. Don’t stare at people
and don’t fidget. I shall expect you to tell me the text when you come
home.”

Anne started off irreproachable, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white
sateen, which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to
the charge of skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle
of her thin figure. Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the
extreme plainness of which had likewise much disappointed Anne, who
had permitted herself secret visions of ribbon and flowers. The latter,
however, were supplied before Anne reached the main road, for being
confronted halfway down the lane with a golden frenzy of wind-stirred
buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Anne promptly and liberally
garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people
might have thought of the result it satisfied Anne, and she tripped
gaily down the road, holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink
and yellow very proudly.

When she had reached Mrs. Lynde’s house she found that lady gone.
Nothing daunted, Anne proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch
she found a crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in
whites and blues and pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this
stranger in their midst, with her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea
little girls had already heard queer stories about Anne. Mrs. Lynde said
she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables,
said she talked all the time to herself or to the trees and flowers
like a crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each other behind
their quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advances, then or later
on when the opening exercises were over and Anne found herself in Miss
Rogerson’s class.

Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school
class for twenty years. Her method of teaching was to ask the printed
questions from the quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the
particular little girl she thought ought to answer the question. She
looked very often at Anne, and Anne, thanks to Marilla’s drilling,
answered promptly; but it may be questioned if she understood very much
about either question or answer.

She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable;
every other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Anne felt that
life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves.

“Well, how did you like Sunday school?” Marilla wanted to know when Anne
came home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the lane,
so Marilla was spared the knowledge of that for a time.

“I didn’t like it a bit. It was horrid.”

“Anne Shirley!” said Marilla rebukingly.

Anne sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonny’s
leaves, and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.

“They might have been lonesome while I was away,” she explained. “And
now about the Sunday school. I behaved well, just as you told me. Mrs.
Lynde was gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church, with
a lot of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the
window while the opening exercises went on. Mr. Bell made an awfully
long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got through
if I hadn’t been sitting by that window. But it looked right out on the
Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that and imagined all sorts
of splendid things.”

“You shouldn’t have done anything of the sort. You should have listened
to Mr. Bell.”

“But he wasn’t talking to me,” protested Anne. “He was talking to God
and he didn’t seem to be very much inter-ested in it, either. I think
he thought God was too far off though. There was a long row of white
birches hanging over the lake and the sunshine fell down through
them, ‘way, ‘way down, deep into the water. Oh, Marilla, it was like a
beautiful dream! It gave me a thrill and I just said, ‘Thank you for it,
God,’ two or three times.”

“Not out loud, I hope,” said Marilla anxiously.

“Oh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr. Bell did get through at last
and they told me to go into the classroom with Miss Rogerson’s class.
There were nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried
to imagine mine were puffed, too, but I couldn’t. Why couldn’t I? It was
as easy as could be to imagine they were puffed when I was alone in
the east gable, but it was awfully hard there among the others who had
really truly puffs.”

“You shouldn’t have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday school.
You should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew it.”

“Oh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever so
many. I don’t think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There were
lots I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t like to because I didn’t think
she was a kindred spirit. Then all the other little girls recited a
paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didn’t, but I could
recite, ‘The Dog at His Master’s Grave’ if she liked. That’s in the
Third Royal Reader. It isn’t a really truly religious piece of poetry,
but it’s so sad and melancholy that it might as well be. She said it
wouldn’t do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase for next
Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it’s splendid. There are
two lines in particular that just thrill me.

   “‘Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell
   In Midian’s evil day.’

“I don’t know what ‘squadrons’ means nor ‘Midian,’ either, but it sounds
_so_ tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it.
I’ll practice it all the week. After Sunday school I asked Miss
Rogerson--because Mrs. Lynde was too far away--to show me your pew.
I sat just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third
chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a
minister I’d pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long,
too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didn’t think
he was a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he
hasn’t enough imagination. I didn’t listen to him very much. I just let
my thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising things.”

Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but
she was hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne had
said, especially about the minister’s sermons and Mr. Bell’s prayers,
were what she herself had really thought deep down in her heart for
years, but had never given expression to. It almost seemed to her that
those secret, unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken visible
and accusing shape and form in the person of this outspoken morsel of
neglected humanity.


CHAPTER XII. A Solemn Vow and Promise


|IT was not until the next Friday that Marilla heard the story of the
flower-wreathed hat. She came home from Mrs. Lynde’s and called Anne to
account.

“Anne, Mrs. Rachel says you went to church last Sunday with your hat
rigged out ridiculous with roses and buttercups. What on earth put you
up to such a caper? A pretty-looking object you must have been!”

“Oh. I know pink and yellow aren’t becoming to me,” began Anne.

“Becoming fiddlesticks! It was putting flowers on your hat at all,
no matter what color they were, that was ridiculous. You are the most
aggravating child!”

“I don’t see why it’s any more ridiculous to wear flowers on your hat
than on your dress,” protested Anne. “Lots of little girls there had
bouquets pinned on their dresses. What’s the difference?”

Marilla was not to be drawn from the safe concrete into dubious paths of
the abstract.

“Don’t answer me back like that, Anne. It was very silly of you to do
such a thing. Never let me catch you at such a trick again. Mrs. Rachel
says she thought she would sink through the floor when she saw you come
in all rigged out like that. She couldn’t get near enough to tell you
to take them off till it was too late. She says people talked about it
something dreadful. Of course they would think I had no better sense
than to let you go decked out like that.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne, tears welling into her eyes. “I never
thought you’d mind. The roses and buttercups were so sweet and pretty
I thought they’d look lovely on my hat. Lots of the little girls had
artificial flowers on their hats. I’m afraid I’m going to be a dreadful
trial to you. Maybe you’d better send me back to the asylum. That would
be terrible; I don’t think I could endure it; most likely I would go
into consumption; I’m so thin as it is, you see. But that would be
better than being a trial to you.”

“Nonsense,” said Marilla, vexed at herself for having made the child
cry. “I don’t want to send you back to the asylum, I’m sure. All I want
is that you should behave like other little girls and not make yourself
ridiculous. Don’t cry any more. I’ve got some news for you. Diana Barry
came home this afternoon. I’m going up to see if I can borrow a skirt
pattern from Mrs. Barry, and if you like you can come with me and get
acquainted with Diana.”

Anne rose to her feet, with clasped hands, the tears still glistening on
her cheeks; the dish towel she had been hemming slipped unheeded to the
floor.

“Oh, Marilla, I’m frightened--now that it has come I’m actually
frightened. What if she shouldn’t like me! It would be the most tragical
disappointment of my life.”

“Now, don’t get into a fluster. And I do wish you wouldn’t use such long
words. It sounds so funny in a little girl. I guess Diana ‘ll like you
well enough. It’s her mother you’ve got to reckon with. If she doesn’t
like you it won’t matter how much Diana does. If she has heard about
your outburst to Mrs. Lynde and going to church with buttercups round
your hat I don’t know what she’ll think of you. You must be polite and
well behaved, and don’t make any of your startling speeches. For pity’s
sake, if the child isn’t actually trembling!”

Anne _was_ trembling. Her face was pale and tense.

“Oh, Marilla, you’d be excited, too, if you were going to meet a little
girl you hoped to be your bosom friend and whose mother mightn’t like
you,” she said as she hastened to get her hat.

They went over to Orchard Slope by the short cut across the brook and up
the firry hill grove. Mrs. Barry came to the kitchen door in answer to
Marilla’s knock. She was a tall black-eyed, black-haired woman, with a
very resolute mouth. She had the reputation of being very strict with
her children.

“How do you do, Marilla?” she said cordially. “Come in. And this is the
little girl you have adopted, I suppose?”

“Yes, this is Anne Shirley,” said Marilla.

“Spelled with an E,” gasped Anne, who, tremulous and excited as she was,
was determined there should be no misunderstanding on that important
point.

Mrs. Barry, not hearing or not comprehending, merely shook hands and
said kindly:

“How are you?”

“I am well in body although considerable rumpled up in spirit, thank you
ma’am,” said Anne gravely. Then aside to Marilla in an audible whisper,
“There wasn’t anything startling in that, was there, Marilla?”

Diana was sitting on the sofa, reading a book which she dropped when the
callers entered. She was a very pretty little girl, with her mother’s
black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, and the merry expression which was
her inheritance from her father.

“This is my little girl Diana,” said Mrs. Barry. “Diana, you might take
Anne out into the garden and show her your flowers. It will be better
for you than straining your eyes over that book. She reads entirely
too much--” this to Marilla as the little girls went out--“and I can’t
prevent her, for her father aids and abets her. She’s always poring over
a book. I’m glad she has the prospect of a playmate--perhaps it will
take her more out-of-doors.”

Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming
through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Anne and Diana,
gazing bashfully at each other over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies.

The Barry garden was a bowery wilderness of flowers which would have
delighted Anne’s heart at any time less fraught with destiny. It was
encircled by huge old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished
flowers that loved the shade. Prim, right-angled paths neatly bordered
with clamshells, intersected it like moist red ribbons and in the beds
between old-fashioned flowers ran riot. There were rosy bleeding-hearts
and great splendid crimson peonies; white, fragrant narcissi and thorny,
sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white columbines and lilac-tinted
Bouncing Bets; clumps of southernwood and ribbon grass and mint; purple
Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, and masses of sweet clover white with its
delicate, fragrant, feathery sprays; scarlet lightning that shot
its fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers; a garden it was where
sunshine lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into loitering,
purred and rustled.

“Oh, Diana,” said Anne at last, clasping her hands and speaking almost
in a whisper, “oh, do you think you can like me a little--enough to be
my bosom friend?”

Diana laughed. Diana always laughed before she spoke.

“Why, I guess so,” she said frankly. “I’m awfully glad you’ve come to
live at Green Gables. It will be jolly to have somebody to play with.
There isn’t any other girl who lives near enough to play with, and I’ve
no sisters big enough.”

“Will you swear to be my friend forever and ever?” demanded Anne
eagerly.

Diana looked shocked.

“Why it’s dreadfully wicked to swear,” she said rebukingly.

“Oh no, not my kind of swearing. There are two kinds, you know.”

“I never heard of but one kind,” said Diana doubtfully.

“There really is another. Oh, it isn’t wicked at all. It just means
vowing and promising solemnly.”

“Well, I don’t mind doing that,” agreed Diana, relieved. “How do you do
it?”

“We must join hands--so,” said Anne gravely. “It ought to be over
running water. We’ll just imagine this path is running water. I’ll
repeat the oath first. I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom
friend, Diana Barry, as long as the sun and moon shall endure. Now you
say it and put my name in.”

Diana repeated the “oath” with a laugh fore and aft. Then she said:

“You’re a queer girl, Anne. I heard before that you were queer. But I
believe I’m going to like you real well.”

When Marilla and Anne went home Diana went with them as far as the log
bridge. The two little girls walked with their arms about each other.
At the brook they parted with many promises to spend the next afternoon
together.

“Well, did you find Diana a kindred spirit?” asked Marilla as they went
up through the garden of Green Gables.

“Oh yes,” sighed Anne, blissfully unconscious of any sarcasm on
Marilla’s part. “Oh Marilla, I’m the happiest girl on Prince Edward
Island this very moment. I assure you I’ll say my prayers with a right
good-will tonight. Diana and I are going to build a playhouse in Mr.
William Bell’s birch grove tomorrow. Can I have those broken pieces of
china that are out in the woodshed? Diana’s birthday is in February and
mine is in March. Don’t you think that is a very strange coincidence?
Diana is going to lend me a book to read. She says it’s perfectly
splendid and tremendously exciting. She’s going to show me a place back
in the woods where rice lilies grow. Don’t you think Diana has got very
soulful eyes? I wish I had soulful eyes. Diana is going to teach me to
sing a song called ‘Nelly in the Hazel Dell.’ She’s going to give me a
picture to put up in my room; it’s a perfectly beautiful picture, she
says--a lovely lady in a pale blue silk dress. A sewing-machine agent
gave it to her. I wish I had something to give Diana. I’m an inch taller
than Diana, but she is ever so much fatter; she says she’d like to be
thin because it’s so much more graceful, but I’m afraid she only said
it to soothe my feelings. We’re going to the shore some day to gather
shells. We have agreed to call the spring down by the log bridge the
Dryad’s Bubble. Isn’t that a perfectly elegant name? I read a story
once about a spring called that. A dryad is sort of a grown-up fairy, I
think.”

“Well, all I hope is you won’t talk Diana to death,” said Marilla. “But
remember this in all your planning, Anne. You’re not going to play all
the time nor most of it. You’ll have your work to do and it’ll have to
be done first.”

Anne’s cup of happiness was full, and Matthew caused it to overflow. He
had just got home from a trip to the store at Carmody, and he sheepishly
produced a small parcel from his pocket and handed it to Anne, with a
deprecatory look at Marilla.

“I heard you say you liked chocolate sweeties, so I got you some,” he
said.

“Humph,” sniffed Marilla. “It’ll ruin her teeth and stomach. There,
there, child, don’t look so dismal. You can eat those, since Matthew
has gone and got them. He’d better have brought you peppermints. They’re
wholesomer. Don’t sicken yourself eating all them at once now.”

“Oh, no, indeed, I won’t,” said Anne eagerly. “I’ll just eat one
tonight, Marilla. And I can give Diana half of them, can’t I? The
other half will taste twice as sweet to me if I give some to her. It’s
delightful to think I have something to give her.”

“I will say it for the child,” said Marilla when Anne had gone to
her gable, “she isn’t stingy. I’m glad, for of all faults I detest
stinginess in a child. Dear me, it’s only three weeks since she came,
and it seems as if she’d been here always. I can’t imagine the place
without her. Now, don’t be looking I told-you-so, Matthew. That’s bad
enough in a woman, but it isn’t to be endured in a man. I’m perfectly
willing to own up that I’m glad I consented to keep the child and that
I’m getting fond of her, but don’t you rub it in, Matthew Cuthbert.”


CHAPTER XIII. The Delights of Anticipation


|IT’S time Anne was in to do her sewing,” said Marilla, glancing at the
clock and then out into the yellow August afternoon where everything
drowsed in the heat. “She stayed playing with Diana more than half an
hour more ‘n I gave her leave to; and now she’s perched out there on
the woodpile talking to Matthew, nineteen to the dozen, when she knows
perfectly well she ought to be at her work. And of course he’s listening
to her like a perfect ninny. I never saw such an infatuated man.
The more she talks and the odder the things she says, the more he’s
delighted evidently. Anne Shirley, you come right in here this minute,
do you hear me!”

A series of staccato taps on the west window brought Anne flying in from
the yard, eyes shining, cheeks faintly flushed with pink, unbraided hair
streaming behind her in a torrent of brightness.

“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “there’s going to be a
Sunday-school picnic next week--in Mr. Harmon Andrews’s field, right
near the lake of Shining Waters. And Mrs. Superintendent Bell and Mrs.
Rachel Lynde are going to make ice cream--think of it, Marilla--_ice
cream!_ And, oh, Marilla, can I go to it?”

“Just look at the clock, if you please, Anne. What time did I tell you
to come in?”

“Two o’clock--but isn’t it splendid about the picnic, Marilla? Please
can I go? Oh, I’ve never been to a picnic--I’ve dreamed of picnics, but
I’ve never--”

“Yes, I told you to come at two o’clock. And it’s a quarter to three.
I’d like to know why you didn’t obey me, Anne.”

“Why, I meant to, Marilla, as much as could be. But you have no idea
how fascinating Idlewild is. And then, of course, I had to tell Matthew
about the picnic. Matthew is such a sympathetic listener. Please can I
go?”

“You’ll have to learn to resist the fascination of
Idle-whatever-you-call-it. When I tell you to come in at a certain time
I mean that time and not half an hour later. And you needn’t stop to
discourse with sympathetic listeners on your way, either. As for the
picnic, of course you can go. You’re a Sunday-school scholar, and it’s
not likely I’d refuse to let you go when all the other little girls are
going.”

“But--but,” faltered Anne, “Diana says that everybody must take a basket
of things to eat. I can’t cook, as you know, Marilla, and--and--I don’t
mind going to a picnic without puffed sleeves so much, but I’d feel
terribly humiliated if I had to go without a basket. It’s been preying
on my mind ever since Diana told me.”

“Well, it needn’t prey any longer. I’ll bake you a basket.”

“Oh, you dear good Marilla. Oh, you are so kind to me. Oh, I’m so much
obliged to you.”

Getting through with her “ohs” Anne cast herself into Marilla’s arms and
rapturously kissed her sallow cheek. It was the first time in her whole
life that childish lips had voluntarily touched Marilla’s face. Again
that sudden sensation of startling sweetness thrilled her. She was
secretly vastly pleased at Anne’s impulsive caress, which was probably
the reason why she said brusquely:

“There, there, never mind your kissing nonsense. I’d sooner see you
doing strictly as you’re told. As for cooking, I mean to begin giving
you lessons in that some of these days. But you’re so featherbrained,
Anne, I’ve been waiting to see if you’d sober down a little and learn
to be steady before I begin. You’ve got to keep your wits about you in
cooking and not stop in the middle of things to let your thoughts rove
all over creation. Now, get out your patchwork and have your square done
before teatime.”

“I do _not_ like patchwork,” said Anne dolefully, hunting out her
workbasket and sitting down before a little heap of red and white
diamonds with a sigh. “I think some kinds of sewing would be nice; but
there’s no scope for imagination in patchwork. It’s just one little seam
after another and you never seem to be getting anywhere. But of course
I’d rather be Anne of Green Gables sewing patchwork than Anne of any
other place with nothing to do but play. I wish time went as quick
sewing patches as it does when I’m playing with Diana, though. Oh, we
do have such elegant times, Marilla. I have to furnish most of the
imagination, but I’m well able to do that. Diana is simply perfect in
every other way. You know that little piece of land across the brook
that runs up between our farm and Mr. Barry’s. It belongs to Mr. William
Bell, and right in the corner there is a little ring of white birch
trees--the most romantic spot, Marilla. Diana and I have our playhouse
there. We call it Idlewild. Isn’t that a poetical name? I assure you it
took me some time to think it out. I stayed awake nearly a whole night
before I invented it. Then, just as I was dropping off to sleep, it came
like an inspiration. Diana was _enraptured_ when she heard it. We have got
our house fixed up elegantly. You must come and see it, Marilla--won’t
you? We have great big stones, all covered with moss, for seats, and
boards from tree to tree for shelves. And we have all our dishes on
them. Of course, they’re all broken but it’s the easiest thing in the
world to imagine that they are whole. There’s a piece of a plate with a
spray of red and yellow ivy on it that is especially beautiful. We keep
it in the parlor and we have the fairy glass there, too. The fairy glass
is as lovely as a dream. Diana found it out in the woods behind their
chicken house. It’s all full of rainbows--just little young rainbows
that haven’t grown big yet--and Diana’s mother told her it was broken
off a hanging lamp they once had. But it’s nice to imagine the fairies
lost it one night when they had a ball, so we call it the fairy glass.
Matthew is going to make us a table. Oh, we have named that little round
pool over in Mr. Barry’s field Willowmere. I got that name out of the
book Diana lent me. That was a thrilling book, Marilla. The heroine
had five lovers. I’d be satisfied with one, wouldn’t you? She was very
handsome and she went through great tribulations. She could faint as
easy as anything. I’d love to be able to faint, wouldn’t you, Marilla?
It’s so romantic. But I’m really very healthy for all I’m so thin. I
believe I’m getting fatter, though. Don’t you think I am? I look at my
elbows every morning when I get up to see if any dimples are coming.
Diana is having a new dress made with elbow sleeves. She is going to
wear it to the picnic. Oh, I do hope it will be fine next Wednesday. I
don’t feel that I could endure the disappointment if anything happened
to prevent me from getting to the picnic. I suppose I’d live through it,
but I’m certain it would be a lifelong sorrow. It wouldn’t matter if
I got to a hundred picnics in after years; they wouldn’t make up for
missing this one. They’re going to have boats on the Lake of Shining
Waters--and ice cream, as I told you. I have never tasted ice cream.
Diana tried to explain what it was like, but I guess ice cream is one of
those things that are beyond imagination.”

“Anne, you have talked even on for ten minutes by the clock,” said
Marilla. “Now, just for curiosity’s sake, see if you can hold your
tongue for the same length of time.”

Anne held her tongue as desired. But for the rest of the week she talked
picnic and thought picnic and dreamed picnic. On Saturday it rained and
she worked herself up into such a frantic state lest it should keep
on raining until and over Wednesday that Marilla made her sew an extra
patchwork square by way of steadying her nerves.

On Sunday Anne confided to Marilla on the way home from church that she
grew actually cold all over with excitement when the minister announced
the picnic from the pulpit.

“Such a thrill as went up and down my back, Marilla! I don’t think I’d
ever really believed until then that there was honestly going to be
a picnic. I couldn’t help fearing I’d only imagined it. But when a
minister says a thing in the pulpit you just have to believe it.”

“You set your heart too much on things, Anne,” said Marilla, with a
sigh. “I’m afraid there’ll be a great many disappointments in store for
you through life.”

“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,”
 exclaimed Anne. “You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can
prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs.
Lynde says, ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be
disappointed.’ But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to
be disappointed.”

Marilla wore her amethyst brooch to church that day as usual. Marilla
always wore her amethyst brooch to church. She would have thought it
rather sacrilegious to leave it off--as bad as forgetting her Bible or
her collection dime. That amethyst brooch was Marilla’s most treasured
possession. A seafaring uncle had given it to her mother who in turn
had bequeathed it to Marilla. It was an old-fashioned oval, containing
a braid of her mother’s hair, surrounded by a border of very fine
amethysts. Marilla knew too little about precious stones to realize how
fine the amethysts actually were; but she thought them very beautiful
and was always pleasantly conscious of their violet shimmer at her
throat, above her good brown satin dress, even although she could not
see it.

Anne had been smitten with delighted admiration when she first saw that
brooch.

“Oh, Marilla, it’s a perfectly elegant brooch. I don’t know how you
can pay attention to the sermon or the prayers when you have it on. I
couldn’t, I know. I think amethysts are just sweet. They are what I used
to think diamonds were like. Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond,
I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like. I
thought they would be lovely glimmering purple stones. When I saw a
real diamond in a lady’s ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of
course, it was very lovely but it wasn’t my idea of a diamond. Will you
let me hold the brooch for one minute, Marilla? Do you think amethysts
can be the souls of good violets?”


CHAPTER XIV. Anne’s Confession


|ON the Monday evening before the picnic Marilla came down from her room
with a troubled face.

“Anne,” she said to that small personage, who was shelling peas by the
spotless table and singing, “Nelly of the Hazel Dell” with a vigor and
expression that did credit to Diana’s teaching, “did you see anything
of my amethyst brooch? I thought I stuck it in my pincushion when I came
home from church yesterday evening, but I can’t find it anywhere.”

“I--I saw it this afternoon when you were away at the Aid Society,” said
Anne, a little slowly. “I was passing your door when I saw it on the
cushion, so I went in to look at it.”

“Did you touch it?” said Marilla sternly.

“Y-e-e-s,” admitted Anne, “I took it up and I pinned it on my breast
just to see how it would look.”

“You had no business to do anything of the sort. It’s very wrong in a
little girl to meddle. You shouldn’t have gone into my room in the first
place and you shouldn’t have touched a brooch that didn’t belong to you
in the second. Where did you put it?”

“Oh, I put it back on the bureau. I hadn’t it on a minute. Truly, I
didn’t mean to meddle, Marilla. I didn’t think about its being wrong to
go in and try on the brooch; but I see now that it was and I’ll never
do it again. That’s one good thing about me. I never do the same naughty
thing twice.”

“You didn’t put it back,” said Marilla. “That brooch isn’t anywhere on
the bureau. You’ve taken it out or something, Anne.”

“I did put it back,” said Anne quickly--pertly, Marilla thought. “I
don’t just remember whether I stuck it on the pincushion or laid it in
the china tray. But I’m perfectly certain I put it back.”

“I’ll go and have another look,” said Marilla, determining to be just.
“If you put that brooch back it’s there still. If it isn’t I’ll know you
didn’t, that’s all!”

Marilla went to her room and made a thorough search, not only over the
bureau but in every other place she thought the brooch might possibly
be. It was not to be found and she returned to the kitchen.

“Anne, the brooch is gone. By your own admission you were the last
person to handle it. Now, what have you done with it? Tell me the truth
at once. Did you take it out and lose it?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Anne solemnly, meeting Marilla’s angry gaze
squarely. “I never took the brooch out of your room and that is the
truth, if I was to be led to the block for it--although I’m not very
certain what a block is. So there, Marilla.”

Anne’s “so there” was only intended to emphasize her assertion, but
Marilla took it as a display of defiance.

“I believe you are telling me a falsehood, Anne,” she said sharply. “I
know you are. There now, don’t say anything more unless you are prepared
to tell the whole truth. Go to your room and stay there until you are
ready to confess.”

“Will I take the peas with me?” said Anne meekly.

“No, I’ll finish shelling them myself. Do as I bid you.”

When Anne had gone Marilla went about her evening tasks in a very
disturbed state of mind. She was worried about her valuable brooch. What
if Anne had lost it? And how wicked of the child to deny having taken
it, when anybody could see she must have! With such an innocent face,
too!

“I don’t know what I wouldn’t sooner have had happen,” thought Marilla,
as she nervously shelled the peas. “Of course, I don’t suppose she meant
to steal it or anything like that. She’s just taken it to play with
or help along that imagination of hers. She must have taken it, that’s
clear, for there hasn’t been a soul in that room since she was in it, by
her own story, until I went up tonight. And the brooch is gone, there’s
nothing surer. I suppose she has lost it and is afraid to own up for
fear she’ll be punished. It’s a dreadful thing to think she tells
falsehoods. It’s a far worse thing than her fit of temper. It’s a
fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you can’t trust.
Slyness and untruthfulness--that’s what she has displayed. I declare I
feel worse about that than about the brooch. If she’d only have told the
truth about it I wouldn’t mind so much.”

Marilla went to her room at intervals all through the evening and
searched for the brooch, without finding it. A bedtime visit to the
east gable produced no result. Anne persisted in denying that she knew
anything about the brooch but Marilla was only the more firmly convinced
that she did.

She told Matthew the story the next morning. Matthew was confounded and
puzzled; he could not so quickly lose faith in Anne but he had to admit
that circumstances were against her.

“You’re sure it hasn’t fell down behind the bureau?” was the only
suggestion he could offer.

“I’ve moved the bureau and I’ve taken out the drawers and I’ve looked
in every crack and cranny” was Marilla’s positive answer. “The brooch
is gone and that child has taken it and lied about it. That’s the plain,
ugly truth, Matthew Cuthbert, and we might as well look it in the face.”

“Well now, what are you going to do about it?” Matthew asked forlornly,
feeling secretly thankful that Marilla and not he had to deal with the
situation. He felt no desire to put his oar in this time.

“She’ll stay in her room until she confesses,” said Marilla grimly,
remembering the success of this method in the former case. “Then we’ll
see. Perhaps we’ll be able to find the brooch if she’ll only tell
where she took it; but in any case she’ll have to be severely punished,
Matthew.”

“Well now, you’ll have to punish her,” said Matthew, reaching for his
hat. “I’ve nothing to do with it, remember. You warned me off yourself.”

Marilla felt deserted by everyone. She could not even go to Mrs. Lynde
for advice. She went up to the east gable with a very serious face and
left it with a face more serious still. Anne steadfastly refused to
confess. She persisted in asserting that she had not taken the brooch.
The child had evidently been crying and Marilla felt a pang of pity
which she sternly repressed. By night she was, as she expressed it,
“beat out.”

“You’ll stay in this room until you confess, Anne. You can make up your
mind to that,” she said firmly.

“But the picnic is tomorrow, Marilla,” cried Anne. “You won’t keep me
from going to that, will you? You’ll just let me out for the afternoon,
won’t you? Then I’ll stay here as long as you like _afterwards_
cheerfully. But I _must_ go to the picnic.”

“You’ll not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you’ve confessed,
Anne.”

“Oh, Marilla,” gasped Anne.

But Marilla had gone out and shut the door.

Wednesday morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to
order for the picnic. Birds sang around Green Gables; the Madonna lilies
in the garden sent out whiffs of perfume that entered in on viewless
winds at every door and window, and wandered through halls and rooms
like spirits of benediction. The birches in the hollow waved joyful
hands as if watching for Anne’s usual morning greeting from the east
gable. But Anne was not at her window. When Marilla took her breakfast
up to her she found the child sitting primly on her bed, pale and
resolute, with tight-shut lips and gleaming eyes.

“Marilla, I’m ready to confess.”

“Ah!” Marilla laid down her tray. Once again her method had succeeded;
but her success was very bitter to her. “Let me hear what you have to
say then, Anne.”

“I took the amethyst brooch,” said Anne, as if repeating a lesson she
had learned. “I took it just as you said. I didn’t mean to take it when
I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Marilla, when I pinned it on my
breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation. I imagined how
perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild and play I was
the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. It would be so much easier to imagine I
was the Lady Cordelia if I had a real amethyst brooch on. Diana and
I make necklaces of roseberries but what are roseberries compared to
amethysts? So I took the brooch. I thought I could put it back before
you came home. I went all the way around by the road to lengthen out the
time. When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters
I took the brooch off to have another look at it. Oh, how it did shine
in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it
just slipped through my fingers--so--and went down--down--down, all
purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath the Lake of Shining
Waters. And that’s the best I can do at confessing, Marilla.”

Marilla felt hot anger surge up into her heart again. This child had
taken and lost her treasured amethyst brooch and now sat there calmly
reciting the details thereof without the least apparent compunction or
repentance.

“Anne, this is terrible,” she said, trying to speak calmly. “You are the
very wickedest girl I ever heard of.”

“Yes, I suppose I am,” agreed Anne tranquilly. “And I know I’ll have to
be punished. It’ll be your duty to punish me, Marilla. Won’t you please
get it over right off because I’d like to go to the picnic with nothing
on my mind.”

“Picnic, indeed! You’ll go to no picnic today, Anne Shirley. That shall
be your punishment. And it isn’t half severe enough either for what
you’ve done!”

“Not go to the picnic!” Anne sprang to her feet and clutched Marilla’s
hand. “But you _promised_ me I might! Oh, Marilla, I must go to the
picnic. That was why I confessed. Punish me any way you like but that.
Oh, Marilla, please, please, let me go to the picnic. Think of the ice
cream! For anything you know I may never have a chance to taste ice
cream again.”

Marilla disengaged Anne’s clinging hands stonily.

“You needn’t plead, Anne. You are not going to the picnic and that’s
final. No, not a word.”

Anne realized that Marilla was not to be moved. She clasped her hands
together, gave a piercing shriek, and then flung herself face
downward on the bed, crying and writhing in an utter abandonment of
disappointment and despair.

“For the land’s sake!” gasped Marilla, hastening from the room. “I
believe the child is crazy. No child in her senses would behave as she
does. If she isn’t she’s utterly bad. Oh dear, I’m afraid Rachel was
right from the first. But I’ve put my hand to the plow and I won’t look
back.”

That was a dismal morning. Marilla worked fiercely and scrubbed the
porch floor and the dairy shelves when she could find nothing else to
do. Neither the shelves nor the porch needed it--but Marilla did. Then
she went out and raked the yard.

When dinner was ready she went to the stairs and called Anne. A
tear-stained face appeared, looking tragically over the banisters.

“Come down to your dinner, Anne.”

“I don’t want any dinner, Marilla,” said Anne, sobbingly. “I couldn’t
eat anything. My heart is broken. You’ll feel remorse of conscience
someday, I expect, for breaking it, Marilla, but I forgive you. Remember
when the time comes that I forgive you. But please don’t ask me to eat
anything, especially boiled pork and greens. Boiled pork and greens are
so unromantic when one is in affliction.”

Exasperated, Marilla returned to the kitchen and poured out her tale
of woe to Matthew, who, between his sense of justice and his unlawful
sympathy with Anne, was a miserable man.

“Well now, she shouldn’t have taken the brooch, Marilla, or told stories
about it,” he admitted, mournfully surveying his plateful of unromantic
pork and greens as if he, like Anne, thought it a food unsuited to
crises of feeling, “but she’s such a little thing--such an interesting
little thing. Don’t you think it’s pretty rough not to let her go to the
picnic when she’s so set on it?”

“Matthew Cuthbert, I’m amazed at you. I think I’ve let her off entirely
too easy. And she doesn’t appear to realize how wicked she’s been at
all--that’s what worries me most. If she’d really felt sorry it wouldn’t
be so bad. And you don’t seem to realize it, neither; you’re making
excuses for her all the time to yourself--I can see that.”

“Well now, she’s such a little thing,” feebly reiterated Matthew. “And
there should be allowances made, Marilla. You know she’s never had any
bringing up.”

“Well, she’s having it now” retorted Marilla.

The retort silenced Matthew if it did not convince him. That dinner was
a very dismal meal. The only cheerful thing about it was Jerry Buote,
the hired boy, and Marilla resented his cheerfulness as a personal
insult.

When her dishes were washed and her bread sponge set and her hens fed
Marilla remembered that she had noticed a small rent in her best black
lace shawl when she had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning
from the Ladies’ Aid.

She would go and mend it. The shawl was in a box in her trunk. As
Marilla lifted it out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that
clustered thickly about the window, struck upon something caught in the
shawl--something that glittered and sparkled in facets of violet light.
Marilla snatched at it with a gasp. It was the amethyst brooch, hanging
to a thread of the lace by its catch!

“Dear life and heart,” said Marilla blankly, “what does this mean?
Here’s my brooch safe and sound that I thought was at the bottom of
Barry’s pond. Whatever did that girl mean by saying she took it and lost
it? I declare I believe Green Gables is bewitched. I remember now that
when I took off my shawl Monday afternoon I laid it on the bureau for a
minute. I suppose the brooch got caught in it somehow. Well!”

Marilla betook herself to the east gable, brooch in hand. Anne had cried
herself out and was sitting dejectedly by the window.

“Anne Shirley,” said Marilla solemnly, “I’ve just found my brooch
hanging to my black lace shawl. Now I want to know what that rigmarole
you told me this morning meant.”

“Why, you said you’d keep me here until I confessed,” returned Anne
wearily, “and so I decided to confess because I was bound to get to the
picnic. I thought out a confession last night after I went to bed and
made it as interesting as I could. And I said it over and over so that I
wouldn’t forget it. But you wouldn’t let me go to the picnic after all,
so all my trouble was wasted.”

Marilla had to laugh in spite of herself. But her conscience pricked
her.

“Anne, you do beat all! But I was wrong--I see that now. I shouldn’t
have doubted your word when I’d never known you to tell a story.
Of course, it wasn’t right for you to confess to a thing you hadn’t
done--it was very wrong to do so. But I drove you to it. So if you’ll
forgive me, Anne, I’ll forgive you and we’ll start square again. And now
get yourself ready for the picnic.”

Anne flew up like a rocket.

“Oh, Marilla, isn’t it too late?”

“No, it’s only two o’clock. They won’t be more than well gathered yet
and it’ll be an hour before they have tea. Wash your face and comb your
hair and put on your gingham. I’ll fill a basket for you. There’s plenty
of stuff baked in the house. And I’ll get Jerry to hitch up the sorrel
and drive you down to the picnic ground.”

“Oh, Marilla,” exclaimed Anne, flying to the washstand. “Five minutes
ago I was so miserable I was wishing I’d never been born and now I
wouldn’t change places with an angel!”

That night a thoroughly happy, completely tired-out Anne returned to
Green Gables in a state of beatification impossible to describe.

“Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a perfectly scrumptious time. Scrumptious is a
new word I learned today. I heard Mary Alice Bell use it. Isn’t it very
expressive? Everything was lovely. We had a splendid tea and then Mr.
Harmon Andrews took us all for a row on the Lake of Shining Waters--six
of us at a time. And Jane Andrews nearly fell overboard. She was leaning
out to pick water lilies and if Mr. Andrews hadn’t caught her by her
sash just in the nick of time she’d fallen in and prob’ly been drowned.
I wish it had been me. It would have been such a romantic experience to
have been nearly drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell. And
we had the ice cream. Words fail me to describe that ice cream. Marilla,
I assure you it was sublime.”

That evening Marilla told the whole story to Matthew over her stocking
basket.

“I’m willing to own up that I made a mistake,” she concluded candidly,
“but I’ve learned a lesson. I have to laugh when I think of Anne’s
‘confession,’ although I suppose I shouldn’t for it really was a
falsehood. But it doesn’t seem as bad as the other would have been,
somehow, and anyhow I’m responsible for it. That child is hard to
understand in some respects. But I believe she’ll turn out all right
yet. And there’s one thing certain, no house will ever be dull that
she’s in.”


CHAPTER XV. A Tempest in the School Teapot


|WHAT a splendid day!” said Anne, drawing a long breath. “Isn’t it good
just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren’t born
yet for missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can
never have this one. And it’s splendider still to have such a lovely way
to go to school by, isn’t it?”

“It’s a lot nicer than going round by the road; that is so dusty
and hot,” said Diana practically, peeping into her dinner basket and
mentally calculating if the three juicy, toothsome, raspberry tarts
reposing there were divided among ten girls how many bites each girl
would have.

The little girls of Avonlea school always pooled their lunches, and
to eat three raspberry tarts all alone or even to share them only with
one’s best chum would have forever and ever branded as “awful mean” the
girl who did it. And yet, when the tarts were divided among ten girls
you just got enough to tantalize you.

The way Anne and Diana went to school _was_ a pretty one. Anne thought
those walks to and from school with Diana couldn’t be improved upon
even by imagination. Going around by the main road would have been so
unromantic; but to go by Lover’s Lane and Willowmere and Violet Vale and
the Birch Path was romantic, if ever anything was.

Lover’s Lane opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and stretched
far up into the woods to the end of the Cuthbert farm. It was the way by
which the cows were taken to the back pasture and the wood hauled home
in winter. Anne had named it Lover’s Lane before she had been a month at
Green Gables.

“Not that lovers ever really walk there,” she explained to Marilla,
“but Diana and I are reading a perfectly magnificent book and there’s a
Lover’s Lane in it. So we want to have one, too. And it’s a very pretty
name, don’t you think? So romantic! We can’t imagine the lovers into it,
you know. I like that lane because you can think out loud there without
people calling you crazy.”

Anne, starting out alone in the morning, went down Lover’s Lane as far
as the brook. Here Diana met her, and the two little girls went on
up the lane under the leafy arch of maples--“maples are such sociable
trees,” said Anne; “they’re always rustling and whispering to
you”--until they came to a rustic bridge. Then they left the lane
and walked through Mr. Barry’s back field and past Willowmere. Beyond
Willowmere came Violet Vale--a little green dimple in the shadow of Mr.
Andrew Bell’s big woods. “Of course there are no violets there now,”
 Anne told Marilla, “but Diana says there are millions of them in spring.
Oh, Marilla, can’t you just imagine you see them? It actually takes away
my breath. I named it Violet Vale. Diana says she never saw the beat
of me for hitting on fancy names for places. It’s nice to be clever at
something, isn’t it? But Diana named the Birch Path. She wanted to, so
I let her; but I’m sure I could have found something more poetical than
plain Birch Path. Anybody can think of a name like that. But the Birch
Path is one of the prettiest places in the world, Marilla.”

It was. Other people besides Anne thought so when they stumbled on it.
It was a little narrow, twisting path, winding down over a long hill
straight through Mr. Bell’s woods, where the light came down sifted
through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart
of a diamond. It was fringed in all its length with slim young birches,
white stemmed and lissom boughed; ferns and starflowers and wild
lilies-of-the-valley and scarlet tufts of pigeonberries grew thickly
along it; and always there was a delightful spiciness in the air and
music of bird calls and the murmur and laugh of wood winds in the trees
overhead. Now and then you might see a rabbit skipping across the road
if you were quiet--which, with Anne and Diana, happened about once in
a blue moon. Down in the valley the path came out to the main road and
then it was just up the spruce hill to the school.

The Avonlea school was a whitewashed building, low in the eaves and
wide in the windows, furnished inside with comfortable substantial
old-fashioned desks that opened and shut, and were carved all over their
lids with the initials and hieroglyphics of three generations of school
children. The schoolhouse was set back from the road and behind it was
a dusky fir wood and a brook where all the children put their bottles of
milk in the morning to keep cool and sweet until dinner hour.

Marilla had seen Anne start off to school on the first day of September
with many secret misgivings. Anne was such an odd girl. How would she
get on with the other children? And how on earth would she ever manage
to hold her tongue during school hours?

Things went better than Marilla feared, however. Anne came home that
evening in high spirits.

“I think I’m going to like school here,” she announced. “I don’t think
much of the master, through. He’s all the time curling his mustache
and making eyes at Prissy Andrews. Prissy is grown up, you know. She’s
sixteen and she’s studying for the entrance examination into Queen’s
Academy at Charlottetown next year. Tillie Boulter says the master is
_dead gone_ on her. She’s got a beautiful complexion and curly brown hair
and she does it up so elegantly. She sits in the long seat at the back
and he sits there, too, most of the time--to explain her lessons, he
says. But Ruby Gillis says she saw him writing something on her slate
and when Prissy read it she blushed as red as a beet and giggled; and
Ruby Gillis says she doesn’t believe it had anything to do with the
lesson.”

“Anne Shirley, don’t let me hear you talking about your teacher in that
way again,” said Marilla sharply. “You don’t go to school to criticize
the master. I guess he can teach _you_ something, and it’s your business
to learn. And I want you to understand right off that you are not to
come home telling tales about him. That is something I won’t encourage.
I hope you were a good girl.”

“Indeed I was,” said Anne comfortably. “It wasn’t so hard as you might
imagine, either. I sit with Diana. Our seat is right by the window and
we can look down to the Lake of Shining Waters. There are a lot of nice
girls in school and we had scrumptious fun playing at dinnertime. It’s
so nice to have a lot of little girls to play with. But of course I like
Diana best and always will. I _adore_ Diana. I’m dreadfully far behind the
others. They’re all in the fifth book and I’m only in the fourth. I feel
that it’s kind of a disgrace. But there’s not one of them has such an
imagination as I have and I soon found that out. We had reading and
geography and Canadian history and dictation today. Mr. Phillips said my
spelling was disgraceful and he held up my slate so that everybody could
see it, all marked over. I felt so mortified, Marilla; he might have
been politer to a stranger, I think. Ruby Gillis gave me an apple and
Sophia Sloane lent me a lovely pink card with ‘May I see you home?’ on
it. I’m to give it back to her tomorrow. And Tillie Boulter let me wear
her bead ring all the afternoon. Can I have some of those pearl beads
off the old pincushion in the garret to make myself a ring? And oh,
Marilla, Jane Andrews told me that Minnie MacPherson told her that she
heard Prissy Andrews tell Sara Gillis that I had a very pretty nose.
Marilla, that is the first compliment I have ever had in my life and you
can’t imagine what a strange feeling it gave me. Marilla, have I really
a pretty nose? I know you’ll tell me the truth.”

“Your nose is well enough,” said Marilla shortly. Secretly she thought
Anne’s nose was a remarkable pretty one; but she had no intention of
telling her so.

That was three weeks ago and all had gone smoothly so far. And now, this
crisp September morning, Anne and Diana were tripping blithely down the
Birch Path, two of the happiest little girls in Avonlea.

“I guess Gilbert Blythe will be in school today,” said Diana. “He’s been
visiting his cousins over in New Brunswick all summer and he only came
home Saturday night. He’s _aw’fly_ handsome, Anne. And he teases the
girls something terrible. He just torments our lives out.”

Diana’s voice indicated that she rather liked having her life tormented
out than not.

“Gilbert Blythe?” said Anne. “Isn’t his name that’s written up on the
porch wall with Julia Bell’s and a big ‘Take Notice’ over them?”

“Yes,” said Diana, tossing her head, “but I’m sure he doesn’t like Julia
Bell so very much. I’ve heard him say he studied the multiplication
table by her freckles.”

“Oh, don’t speak about freckles to me,” implored Anne. “It isn’t
delicate when I’ve got so many. But I do think that writing take-notices
up on the wall about the boys and girls is the silliest ever. I should
just like to see anybody dare to write my name up with a boy’s. Not, of
course,” she hastened to add, “that anybody would.”

Anne sighed. She didn’t want her name written up. But it was a little
humiliating to know that there was no danger of it.

“Nonsense,” said Diana, whose black eyes and glossy tresses had played
such havoc with the hearts of Avonlea schoolboys that her name figured
on the porch walls in half a dozen take-notices. “It’s only meant as
a joke. And don’t you be too sure your name won’t ever be written up.
Charlie Sloane is _dead gone_ on you. He told his mother--his _mother_,
mind you--that you were the smartest girl in school. That’s better than
being good looking.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Anne, feminine to the core. “I’d rather be pretty
than clever. And I hate Charlie Sloane, I can’t bear a boy with goggle
eyes. If anyone wrote my name up with his I’d never _get_ over it, Diana
Barry. But it _is_ nice to keep head of your class.”

“You’ll have Gilbert in your class after this,” said Diana, “and he’s
used to being head of his class, I can tell you. He’s only in the fourth
book although he’s nearly fourteen. Four years ago his father was sick
and had to go out to Alberta for his health and Gilbert went with him.
They were there three years and Gil didn’t go to school hardly any
until they came back. You won’t find it so easy to keep head after this,
Anne.”

“I’m glad,” said Anne quickly. “I couldn’t really feel proud of keeping
head of little boys and girls of just nine or ten. I got up yesterday
spelling ‘ebullition.’ Josie Pye was head and, mind you, she peeped
in her book. Mr. Phillips didn’t see her--he was looking at Prissy
Andrews--but I did. I just swept her a look of freezing scorn and she
got as red as a beet and spelled it wrong after all.”

“Those Pye girls are cheats all round,” said Diana indignantly, as they
climbed the fence of the main road. “Gertie Pye actually went and put
her milk bottle in my place in the brook yesterday. Did you ever? I
don’t speak to her now.”

When Mr. Phillips was in the back of the room hearing Prissy Andrews’s
Latin, Diana whispered to Anne, “That’s Gilbert Blythe sitting right
across the aisle from you, Anne. Just look at him and see if you don’t
think he’s handsome.”

Anne looked accordingly. She had a good chance to do so, for the said
Gilbert Blythe was absorbed in stealthily pinning the long yellow braid
of Ruby Gillis, who sat in front of him, to the back of her seat. He
was a tall boy, with curly brown hair, roguish hazel eyes, and a mouth
twisted into a teasing smile. Presently Ruby Gillis started up to take
a sum to the master; she fell back into her seat with a little shriek,
believing that her hair was pulled out by the roots. Everybody looked at
her and Mr. Phillips glared so sternly that Ruby began to cry. Gilbert
had whisked the pin out of sight and was studying his history with the
soberest face in the world; but when the commotion subsided he looked at
Anne and winked with inexpressible drollery.

“I think your Gilbert Blythe _is_ handsome,” confided Anne to Diana,
“but I think he’s very bold. It isn’t good manners to wink at a strange
girl.”

But it was not until the afternoon that things really began to happen.

Mr. Phillips was back in the corner explaining a problem in algebra to
Prissy Andrews and the rest of the scholars were doing pretty much as
they pleased eating green apples, whispering, drawing pictures on their
slates, and driving crickets harnessed to strings, up and down aisle.
Gilbert Blythe was trying to make Anne Shirley look at him and failing
utterly, because Anne was at that moment totally oblivious not only
to the very existence of Gilbert Blythe, but of every other scholar in
Avonlea school itself. With her chin propped on her hands and her eyes
fixed on the blue glimpse of the Lake of Shining Waters that the west
window afforded, she was far away in a gorgeous dreamland hearing and
seeing nothing save her own wonderful visions.

Gilbert Blythe wasn’t used to putting himself out to make a girl look
at him and meeting with failure. She _should_ look at him, that red-haired
Shirley girl with the little pointed chin and the big eyes that weren’t
like the eyes of any other girl in Avonlea school.

Gilbert reached across the aisle, picked up the end of Anne’s long red
braid, held it out at arm’s length and said in a piercing whisper:

“Carrots! Carrots!”

Then Anne looked at him with a vengeance!

She did more than look. She sprang to her feet, her bright fancies
fallen into cureless ruin. She flashed one indignant glance at Gilbert
from eyes whose angry sparkle was swiftly quenched in equally angry
tears.

“You mean, hateful boy!” she exclaimed passionately. “How dare you!”

And then--thwack! Anne had brought her slate down on Gilbert’s head and
cracked it--slate not head--clear across.

Avonlea school always enjoyed a scene. This was an especially enjoyable
one. Everybody said “Oh” in horrified delight. Diana gasped. Ruby
Gillis, who was inclined to be hysterical, began to cry. Tommy
Sloane let his team of crickets escape him altogether while he stared
open-mouthed at the tableau.

Mr. Phillips stalked down the aisle and laid his hand heavily on Anne’s
shoulder.

“Anne Shirley, what does this mean?” he said angrily. Anne returned no
answer. It was asking too much of flesh and blood to expect her to tell
before the whole school that she had been called “carrots.” Gilbert it
was who spoke up stoutly.

“It was my fault Mr. Phillips. I teased her.”

Mr. Phillips paid no heed to Gilbert.

“I am sorry to see a pupil of mine displaying such a temper and such
a vindictive spirit,” he said in a solemn tone, as if the mere fact of
being a pupil of his ought to root out all evil passions from the hearts
of small imperfect mortals. “Anne, go and stand on the platform in front
of the blackboard for the rest of the afternoon.”

Anne would have infinitely preferred a whipping to this punishment under
which her sensitive spirit quivered as from a whiplash. With a white,
set face she obeyed. Mr. Phillips took a chalk crayon and wrote on the
blackboard above her head.

“Ann Shirley has a very bad temper. Ann Shirley must learn to control
her temper,” and then read it out loud so that even the primer class,
who couldn’t read writing, should understand it.

Anne stood there the rest of the afternoon with that legend above her.
She did not cry or hang her head. Anger was still too hot in her heart
for that and it sustained her amid all her agony of humiliation. With
resentful eyes and passion-red cheeks she confronted alike Diana’s
sympathetic gaze and Charlie Sloane’s indignant nods and Josie Pye’s
malicious smiles. As for Gilbert Blythe, she would not even look at him.
She would _never_ look at him again! She would never speak to him!!

When school was dismissed Anne marched out with her red head held high.
Gilbert Blythe tried to intercept her at the porch door.

“I’m awfully sorry I made fun of your hair, Anne,” he whispered
contritely. “Honest I am. Don’t be mad for keeps, now.”

Anne swept by disdainfully, without look or sign of hearing. “Oh
how could you, Anne?” breathed Diana as they went down the road half
reproachfully, half admiringly. Diana felt that _she_ could never have
resisted Gilbert’s plea.

“I shall never forgive Gilbert Blythe,” said Anne firmly. “And Mr.
Phillips spelled my name without an e, too. The iron has entered into my
soul, Diana.”

Diana hadn’t the least idea what Anne meant but she understood it was
something terrible.

“You mustn’t mind Gilbert making fun of your hair,” she said soothingly.
“Why, he makes fun of all the girls. He laughs at mine because it’s
so black. He’s called me a crow a dozen times; and I never heard him
apologize for anything before, either.”

“There’s a great deal of difference between being called a crow and
being called carrots,” said Anne with dignity. “Gilbert Blythe has hurt
my feelings _excruciatingly_, Diana.”

It is possible the matter might have blown over without more
excruciation if nothing else had happened. But when things begin to
happen they are apt to keep on.

Avonlea scholars often spent noon hour picking gum in Mr. Bell’s spruce
grove over the hill and across his big pasture field. From there they
could keep an eye on Eben Wright’s house, where the master boarded. When
they saw Mr. Phillips emerging therefrom they ran for the schoolhouse;
but the distance being about three times longer than Mr. Wright’s lane
they were very apt to arrive there, breathless and gasping, some three
minutes too late.

On the following day Mr. Phillips was seized with one of his spasmodic
fits of reform and announced before going home to dinner, that he should
expect to find all the scholars in their seats when he returned. Anyone
who came in late would be punished.

All the boys and some of the girls went to Mr. Bell’s spruce grove as
usual, fully intending to stay only long enough to “pick a chew.” But
spruce groves are seductive and yellow nuts of gum beguiling; they
picked and loitered and strayed; and as usual the first thing that
recalled them to a sense of the flight of time was Jimmy Glover shouting
from the top of a patriarchal old spruce “Master’s coming.”

The girls who were on the ground, started first and managed to reach the
schoolhouse in time but without a second to spare. The boys, who had to
wriggle hastily down from the trees, were later; and Anne, who had not
been picking gum at all but was wandering happily in the far end of the
grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to herself, with a
wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if she were some wild divinity
of the shadowy places, was latest of all. Anne could run like a deer,
however; run she did with the impish result that she overtook the boys
at the door and was swept into the schoolhouse among them just as Mr.
Phillips was in the act of hanging up his hat.

Mr. Phillips’s brief reforming energy was over; he didn’t want the
bother of punishing a dozen pupils; but it was necessary to do something
to save his word, so he looked about for a scapegoat and found it
in Anne, who had dropped into her seat, gasping for breath, with a
forgotten lily wreath hanging askew over one ear and giving her a
particularly rakish and disheveled appearance.

“Anne Shirley, since you seem to be so fond of the boys’ company we
shall indulge your taste for it this afternoon,” he said sarcastically.
“Take those flowers out of your hair and sit with Gilbert Blythe.”

The other boys snickered. Diana, turning pale with pity, plucked the
wreath from Anne’s hair and squeezed her hand. Anne stared at the master
as if turned to stone.

“Did you hear what I said, Anne?” queried Mr. Phillips sternly.

“Yes, sir,” said Anne slowly “but I didn’t suppose you really meant it.”

“I assure you I did”--still with the sarcastic inflection which all the
children, and Anne especially, hated. It flicked on the raw. “Obey me at
once.”

For a moment Anne looked as if she meant to disobey. Then, realizing
that there was no help for it, she rose haughtily, stepped across the
aisle, sat down beside Gilbert Blythe, and buried her face in her arms
on the desk. Ruby Gillis, who got a glimpse of it as it went down,
told the others going home from school that she’d “acksually never seen
anything like it--it was so white, with awful little red spots in it.”

To Anne, this was as the end of all things. It was bad enough to be
singled out for punishment from among a dozen equally guilty ones; it
was worse still to be sent to sit with a boy, but that that boy should
be Gilbert Blythe was heaping insult on injury to a degree utterly
unbearable. Anne felt that she could not bear it and it would be of
no use to try. Her whole being seethed with shame and anger and
humiliation.

At first the other scholars looked and whispered and giggled and nudged.
But as Anne never lifted her head and as Gilbert worked fractions as if
his whole soul was absorbed in them and them only, they soon returned
to their own tasks and Anne was forgotten. When Mr. Phillips called the
history class out Anne should have gone, but Anne did not move, and
Mr. Phillips, who had been writing some verses “To Priscilla” before he
called the class, was thinking about an obstinate rhyme still and never
missed her. Once, when nobody was looking, Gilbert took from his desk
a little pink candy heart with a gold motto on it, “You are sweet,” and
slipped it under the curve of Anne’s arm. Whereupon Anne arose, took the
pink heart gingerly between the tips of her fingers, dropped it on the
floor, ground it to powder beneath her heel, and resumed her position
without deigning to bestow a glance on Gilbert.

When school went out Anne marched to her desk, ostentatiously took out
everything therein, books and writing tablet, pen and ink, testament and
arithmetic, and piled them neatly on her cracked slate.

“What are you taking all those things home for, Anne?” Diana wanted to
know, as soon as they were out on the road. She had not dared to ask the
question before.

“I am not coming back to school any more,” said Anne. Diana gasped and
stared at Anne to see if she meant it.

“Will Marilla let you stay home?” she asked.

“She’ll have to,” said Anne. “I’ll _never_ go to school to that man
again.”

“Oh, Anne!” Diana looked as if she were ready to cry. “I do think you’re
mean. What shall I do? Mr. Phillips will make me sit with that horrid
Gertie Pye--I know he will because she is sitting alone. Do come back,
Anne.”

“I’d do almost anything in the world for you, Diana,” said Anne sadly.
“I’d let myself be torn limb from limb if it would do you any good. But
I can’t do this, so please don’t ask it. You harrow up my very soul.”

“Just think of all the fun you will miss,” mourned Diana. “We are going
to build the loveliest new house down by the brook; and we’ll be playing
ball next week and you’ve never played ball, Anne. It’s tremendously
exciting. And we’re going to learn a new song--Jane Andrews is
practicing it up now; and Alice Andrews is going to bring a new Pansy
book next week and we’re all going to read it out loud, chapter about,
down by the brook. And you know you are so fond of reading out loud,
Anne.”

Nothing moved Anne in the least. Her mind was made up. She would not go
to school to Mr. Phillips again; she told Marilla so when she got home.

“Nonsense,” said Marilla.

“It isn’t nonsense at all,” said Anne, gazing at Marilla with solemn,
reproachful eyes. “Don’t you understand, Marilla? I’ve been insulted.”

“Insulted fiddlesticks! You’ll go to school tomorrow as usual.”

“Oh, no.” Anne shook her head gently. “I’m not going back, Marilla. I’ll
learn my lessons at home and I’ll be as good as I can be and hold my
tongue all the time if it’s possible at all. But I will not go back to
school, I assure you.”

Marilla saw something remarkably like unyielding stubbornness looking
out of Anne’s small face. She understood that she would have trouble in
overcoming it; but she re-solved wisely to say nothing more just then.
“I’ll run down and see Rachel about it this evening,” she thought.
“There’s no use reasoning with Anne now. She’s too worked up and I’ve
an idea she can be awful stubborn if she takes the notion. Far as I can
make out from her story, Mr. Phillips has been carrying matters with a
rather high hand. But it would never do to say so to her. I’ll just talk
it over with Rachel. She’s sent ten children to school and she ought to
know something about it. She’ll have heard the whole story, too, by this
time.”

Marilla found Mrs. Lynde knitting quilts as industriously and cheerfully
as usual.

“I suppose you know what I’ve come about,” she said, a little
shamefacedly.

Mrs. Rachel nodded.

“About Anne’s fuss in school, I reckon,” she said. “Tillie Boulter was
in on her way home from school and told me about it.”

“I don’t know what to do with her,” said Marilla. “She declares she
won’t go back to school. I never saw a child so worked up. I’ve been
expecting trouble ever since she started to school. I knew things were
going too smooth to last. She’s so high strung. What would you advise,
Rachel?”

“Well, since you’ve asked my advice, Marilla,” said Mrs. Lynde
amiably--Mrs. Lynde dearly loved to be asked for advice--“I’d just
humor her a little at first, that’s what I’d do. It’s my belief that
Mr. Phillips was in the wrong. Of course, it doesn’t do to say so to the
children, you know. And of course he did right to punish her yesterday
for giving way to temper. But today it was different. The others who
were late should have been punished as well as Anne, that’s what. And I
don’t believe in making the girls sit with the boys for punishment. It
isn’t modest. Tillie Boulter was real indignant. She took Anne’s part
right through and said all the scholars did too. Anne seems real popular
among them, somehow. I never thought she’d take with them so well.”

“Then you really think I’d better let her stay home,” said Marilla in
amazement.

“Yes. That is I wouldn’t say school to her again until she said it
herself. Depend upon it, Marilla, she’ll cool off in a week or so and
be ready enough to go back of her own accord, that’s what, while, if
you were to make her go back right off, dear knows what freak or tantrum
she’d take next and make more trouble than ever. The less fuss made the
better, in my opinion. She won’t miss much by not going to school, as
far as _that_ goes. Mr. Phillips isn’t any good at all as a teacher. The
order he keeps is scandalous, that’s what, and he neglects the young
fry and puts all his time on those big scholars he’s getting ready for
Queen’s. He’d never have got the school for another year if his uncle
hadn’t been a trustee--_the_ trustee, for he just leads the other two
around by the nose, that’s what. I declare, I don’t know what education
in this Island is coming to.”

Mrs. Rachel shook her head, as much as to say if she were only at the
head of the educational system of the Province things would be much
better managed.

Marilla took Mrs. Rachel’s advice and not another word was said to Anne
about going back to school. She learned her lessons at home, did her
chores, and played with Diana in the chilly purple autumn twilights;
but when she met Gilbert Blythe on the road or encountered him in Sunday
school she passed him by with an icy contempt that was no whit thawed by
his evident desire to appease her. Even Diana’s efforts as a peacemaker
were of no avail. Anne had evidently made up her mind to hate Gilbert
Blythe to the end of life.

As much as she hated Gilbert, however, did she love Diana, with all the
love of her passionate little heart, equally intense in its likes and
dislikes. One evening Marilla, coming in from the orchard with a basket
of apples, found Anne sitting along by the east window in the twilight,
crying bitterly.

“Whatever’s the matter now, Anne?” she asked.

“It’s about Diana,” sobbed Anne luxuriously. “I love Diana so, Marilla.
I cannot ever live without her. But I know very well when we grow up
that Diana will get married and go away and leave me. And oh, what shall
I do? I hate her husband--I just hate him furiously. I’ve been imagining
it all out--the wedding and everything--Diana dressed in snowy garments,
with a veil, and looking as beautiful and regal as a queen; and me the
bridesmaid, with a lovely dress too, and puffed sleeves, but with a
breaking heart hid beneath my smiling face. And then bidding Diana
goodbye-e-e--” Here Anne broke down entirely and wept with increasing
bitterness.

Marilla turned quickly away to hide her twitching face; but it was no
use; she collapsed on the nearest chair and burst into such a hearty and
unusual peal of laughter that Matthew, crossing the yard outside, halted
in amazement. When had he heard Marilla laugh like that before?

“Well, Anne Shirley,” said Marilla as soon as she could speak, “if you
must borrow trouble, for pity’s sake borrow it handier home. I should
think you had an imagination, sure enough.”


CHAPTER XVI. Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results


|OCTOBER was a beautiful month at Green Gables, when the birches in the
hollow turned as golden as sunshine and the maples behind the orchard
were royal crimson and the wild cherry trees along the lane put on the
loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy green, while the fields sunned
themselves in aftermaths.

Anne reveled in the world of color about her.

“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in
with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world
where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from
September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t
they give you a thrill--several thrills? I’m going to decorate my room
with them.”

“Messy things,” said Marilla, whose aesthetic sense was not noticeably
developed. “You clutter up your room entirely too much with out-of-doors
stuff, Anne. Bedrooms were made to sleep in.”

“Oh, and dream in too, Marilla. And you know one can dream so much
better in a room where there are pretty things. I’m going to put these
boughs in the old blue jug and set them on my table.”

“Mind you don’t drop leaves all over the stairs then. I’m going on a
meeting of the Aid Society at Carmody this afternoon, Anne, and I won’t
likely be home before dark. You’ll have to get Matthew and Jerry their
supper, so mind you don’t forget to put the tea to draw until you sit
down at the table as you did last time.”

“It was dreadful of me to forget,” said Anne apologetically, “but that
was the afternoon I was trying to think of a name for Violet Vale and it
crowded other things out. Matthew was so good. He never scolded a bit.
He put the tea down himself and said we could wait awhile as well as
not. And I told him a lovely fairy story while we were waiting, so
he didn’t find the time long at all. It was a beautiful fairy story,
Marilla. I forgot the end of it, so I made up an end for it myself and
Matthew said he couldn’t tell where the join came in.”

“Matthew would think it all right, Anne, if you took a notion to get up
and have dinner in the middle of the night. But you keep your wits about
you this time. And--I don’t really know if I’m doing right--it may make
you more addlepated than ever--but you can ask Diana to come over and
spend the afternoon with you and have tea here.”

“Oh, Marilla!” Anne clasped her hands. “How perfectly lovely! You _are_
able to imagine things after all or else you’d never have understood how
I’ve longed for that very thing. It will seem so nice and grown-uppish.
No fear of my forgetting to put the tea to draw when I have company. Oh,
Marilla, can I use the rosebud spray tea set?”

“No, indeed! The rosebud tea set! Well, what next? You know I never use
that except for the minister or the Aids. You’ll put down the old brown
tea set. But you can open the little yellow crock of cherry preserves.
It’s time it was being used anyhow--I believe it’s beginning to work.
And you can cut some fruit cake and have some of the cookies and snaps.”

“I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and
pouring out the tea,” said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically. “And
asking Diana if she takes sugar! I know she doesn’t but of course I’ll
ask her just as if I didn’t know. And then pressing her to take another
piece of fruit cake and another helping of preserves. Oh, Marilla, it’s
a wonderful sensation just to think of it. Can I take her into the spare
room to lay off her hat when she comes? And then into the parlor to
sit?”

“No. The sitting room will do for you and your company. But there’s a
bottle half full of raspberry cordial that was left over from the church
social the other night. It’s on the second shelf of the sitting-room
closet and you and Diana can have it if you like, and a cooky to eat
with it along in the afternoon, for I daresay Matthew ‘ll be late coming
in to tea since he’s hauling potatoes to the vessel.”

Anne flew down to the hollow, past the Dryad’s Bubble and up the spruce
path to Orchard Slope, to ask Diana to tea. As a result just after
Marilla had driven off to Carmody, Diana came over, dressed in _her_
second-best dress and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked
out to tea. At other times she was wont to run into the kitchen without
knocking; but now she knocked primly at the front door. And when Anne,
dressed in her second best, as primly opened it, both little girls
shook hands as gravely as if they had never met before. This unnatural
solemnity lasted until after Diana had been taken to the east gable to
lay off her hat and then had sat for ten minutes in the sitting room,
toes in position.

“How is your mother?” inquired Anne politely, just as if she had not
seen Mrs. Barry picking apples that morning in excellent health and
spirits.

“She is very well, thank you. I suppose Mr. Cuthbert is hauling potatoes
to the _lily sands_ this afternoon, is he?” said Diana, who had ridden
down to Mr. Harmon Andrews’s that morning in Matthew’s cart.

“Yes. Our potato crop is very good this year. I hope your father’s crop
is good too.”

“It is fairly good, thank you. Have you picked many of your apples yet?”

“Oh, ever so many,” said Anne forgetting to be dignified and jumping up
quickly. “Let’s go out to the orchard and get some of the Red Sweetings,
Diana. Marilla says we can have all that are left on the tree. Marilla
is a very generous woman. She said we could have fruit cake and cherry
preserves for tea. But it isn’t good manners to tell your company what
you are going to give them to eat, so I won’t tell you what she said we
could have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it’s bright
red color. I love bright red drinks, don’t you? They taste twice as good
as any other color.”

The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground
with fruit, proved so delightful that the little girls spent most of the
afternoon in it, sitting in a grassy corner where the frost had spared
the green and the mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples
and talking as hard as they could. Diana had much to tell Anne of what
went on in school. She had to sit with Gertie Pye and she hated
it; Gertie squeaked her pencil all the time and it just made
her--Diana’s--blood run cold; Ruby Gillis had charmed all her warts
away, true’s you live, with a magic pebble that old Mary Joe from the
Creek gave her. You had to rub the warts with the pebble and then throw
it away over your left shoulder at the time of the new moon and the
warts would all go. Charlie Sloane’s name was written up with Em White’s
on the porch wall and Em White was _awful mad_ about it; Sam Boulter had
“sassed” Mr. Phillips in class and Mr. Phillips whipped him and Sam’s
father came down to the school and dared Mr. Phillips to lay a hand on
one of his children again; and Mattie Andrews had a new red hood and a
blue crossover with tassels on it and the airs she put on about it were
perfectly sickening; and Lizzie Wright didn’t speak to Mamie Wilson
because Mamie Wilson’s grown-up sister had cut out Lizzie Wright’s
grown-up sister with her beau; and everybody missed Anne so and wished
she’s come to school again; and Gilbert Blythe--

But Anne didn’t want to hear about Gilbert Blythe. She jumped up
hurriedly and said suppose they go in and have some raspberry cordial.

Anne looked on the second shelf of the room pantry but there was no
bottle of raspberry cordial there. Search revealed it away back on the
top shelf. Anne put it on a tray and set it on the table with a tumbler.

“Now, please help yourself, Diana,” she said politely. “I don’t believe
I’ll have any just now. I don’t feel as if I wanted any after all those
apples.”

Diana poured herself out a tumblerful, looked at its bright-red hue
admiringly, and then sipped it daintily.

“That’s awfully nice raspberry cordial, Anne,” she said. “I didn’t know
raspberry cordial was so nice.”

“I’m real glad you like it. Take as much as you want. I’m going to
run out and stir the fire up. There are so many responsibilities on a
person’s mind when they’re keeping house, isn’t there?”

When Anne came back from the kitchen Diana was drinking her second
glassful of cordial; and, being entreated thereto by Anne, she offered
no particular objection to the drinking of a third. The tumblerfuls were
generous ones and the raspberry cordial was certainly very nice.

“The nicest I ever drank,” said Diana. “It’s ever so much nicer than
Mrs. Lynde’s, although she brags of hers so much. It doesn’t taste a bit
like hers.”

“I should think Marilla’s raspberry cordial would prob’ly be much nicer
than Mrs. Lynde’s,” said Anne loyally. “Marilla is a famous cook. She is
trying to teach me to cook but I assure you, Diana, it is uphill work.
There’s so little scope for imagination in cookery. You just have to go
by rules. The last time I made a cake I forgot to put the flour in. I
was thinking the loveliest story about you and me, Diana. I thought you
were desperately ill with smallpox and everybody deserted you, but I
went boldly to your bedside and nursed you back to life; and then I took
the smallpox and died and I was buried under those poplar trees in the
graveyard and you planted a rosebush by my grave and watered it with
your tears; and you never, never forgot the friend of your youth who
sacrificed her life for you. Oh, it was such a pathetic tale, Diana.
The tears just rained down over my cheeks while I mixed the cake. But
I forgot the flour and the cake was a dismal failure. Flour is so
essential to cakes, you know. Marilla was very cross and I don’t wonder.
I’m a great trial to her. She was terribly mortified about the pudding
sauce last week. We had a plum pudding for dinner on Tuesday and there
was half the pudding and a pitcherful of sauce left over. Marilla said
there was enough for another dinner and told me to set it on the pantry
shelf and cover it. I meant to cover it just as much as could be, Diana,
but when I carried it in I was imagining I was a nun--of course I’m a
Protestant but I imagined I was a Catholic--taking the veil to bury a
broken heart in cloistered seclusion; and I forgot all about covering
the pudding sauce. I thought of it next morning and ran to the pantry.
Diana, fancy if you can my extreme horror at finding a mouse drowned in
that pudding sauce! I lifted the mouse out with a spoon and threw it out
in the yard and then I washed the spoon in three waters. Marilla was out
milking and I fully intended to ask her when she came in if I’d give the
sauce to the pigs; but when she did come in I was imagining that I was
a frost fairy going through the woods turning the trees red and yellow,
whichever they wanted to be, so I never thought about the pudding sauce
again and Marilla sent me out to pick apples. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Chester
Ross from Spencervale came here that morning. You know they are very
stylish people, especially Mrs. Chester Ross. When Marilla called me in
dinner was all ready and everybody was at the table. I tried to be as
polite and dignified as I could be, for I wanted Mrs. Chester Ross to
think I was a ladylike little girl even if I wasn’t pretty. Everything
went right until I saw Marilla coming with the plum pudding in one hand
and the pitcher of pudding sauce _warmed up_, in the other. Diana, that
was a terrible moment. I remembered everything and I just stood up in
my place and shrieked out ‘Marilla, you mustn’t use that pudding sauce.
There was a mouse drowned in it. I forgot to tell you before.’ Oh,
Diana, I shall never forget that awful moment if I live to be a hundred.
Mrs. Chester Ross just _looked_ at me and I thought I would sink through
the floor with mortification. She is such a perfect housekeeper and
fancy what she must have thought of us. Marilla turned red as fire but
she never said a word--then. She just carried that sauce and pudding out
and brought in some strawberry preserves. She even offered me some, but
I couldn’t swallow a mouthful. It was like heaping coals of fire on
my head. After Mrs. Chester Ross went away, Marilla gave me a dreadful
scolding. Why, Diana, what is the matter?”

Diana had stood up very unsteadily; then she sat down again, putting her
hands to her head.

“I’m--I’m awful sick,” she said, a little thickly. “I--I--must go right
home.”

“Oh, you mustn’t dream of going home without your tea,” cried Anne in
distress. “I’ll get it right off--I’ll go and put the tea down this very
minute.”

“I must go home,” repeated Diana, stupidly but determinedly.

“Let me get you a lunch anyhow,” implored Anne. “Let me give you a bit
of fruit cake and some of the cherry preserves. Lie down on the sofa for
a little while and you’ll be better. Where do you feel bad?”

“I must go home,” said Diana, and that was all she would say. In vain
Anne pleaded.

“I never heard of company going home without tea,” she mourned. “Oh,
Diana, do you suppose that it’s possible you’re really taking the
smallpox? If you are I’ll go and nurse you, you can depend on that. I’ll
never forsake you. But I do wish you’d stay till after tea. Where do you
feel bad?”

“I’m awful dizzy,” said Diana.

And indeed, she walked very dizzily. Anne, with tears of disappointment
in her eyes, got Diana’s hat and went with her as far as the Barry
yard fence. Then she wept all the way back to Green Gables, where she
sorrowfully put the remainder of the raspberry cordial back into the
pantry and got tea ready for Matthew and Jerry, with all the zest gone
out of the performance.

The next day was Sunday and as the rain poured down in torrents from
dawn till dusk Anne did not stir abroad from Green Gables. Monday
afternoon Marilla sent her down to Mrs. Lynde’s on an errand. In a very
short space of time Anne came flying back up the lane with tears rolling
down her cheeks. Into the kitchen she dashed and flung herself face
downward on the sofa in an agony.

“Whatever has gone wrong now, Anne?” queried Marilla in doubt and
dismay. “I do hope you haven’t gone and been saucy to Mrs. Lynde again.”

No answer from Anne save more tears and stormier sobs!

“Anne Shirley, when I ask you a question I want to be answered. Sit
right up this very minute and tell me what you are crying about.”

Anne sat up, tragedy personified.

“Mrs. Lynde was up to see Mrs. Barry today and Mrs. Barry was in an
awful state,” she wailed. “She says that I set Diana _drunk_ Saturday
and sent her home in a disgraceful condition. And she says I must be a
thoroughly bad, wicked little girl and she’s never, never going to let
Diana play with me again. Oh, Marilla, I’m just overcome with woe.”

Marilla stared in blank amazement.

“Set Diana drunk!” she said when she found her voice. “Anne are you or
Mrs. Barry crazy? What on earth did you give her?”

“Not a thing but raspberry cordial,” sobbed Anne. “I never thought
raspberry cordial would set people drunk, Marilla--not even if they
drank three big tumblerfuls as Diana did. Oh, it sounds so--so--like
Mrs. Thomas’s husband! But I didn’t mean to set her drunk.”

“Drunk fiddlesticks!” said Marilla, marching to the sitting room pantry.
There on the shelf was a bottle which she at once recognized as one
containing some of her three-year-old homemade currant wine for which
she was celebrated in Avonlea, although certain of the stricter sort,
Mrs. Barry among them, disapproved strongly of it. And at the same time
Marilla recollected that she had put the bottle of raspberry cordial
down in the cellar instead of in the pantry as she had told Anne.

She went back to the kitchen with the wine bottle in her hand. Her face
was twitching in spite of herself.

“Anne, you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble. You went
and gave Diana currant wine instead of raspberry cordial. Didn’t you
know the difference yourself?”

“I never tasted it,” said Anne. “I thought it was the cordial. I meant
to be so--so--hospitable. Diana got awfully sick and had to go home.
Mrs. Barry told Mrs. Lynde she was simply dead drunk. She just laughed
silly-like when her mother asked her what was the matter and went to
sleep and slept for hours. Her mother smelled her breath and knew she
was drunk. She had a fearful headache all day yesterday. Mrs. Barry is
so indignant. She will never believe but what I did it on purpose.”

“I should think she would better punish Diana for being so greedy as to
drink three glassfuls of anything,” said Marilla shortly. “Why, three
of those big glasses would have made her sick even if it had only been
cordial. Well, this story will be a nice handle for those folks who are
so down on me for making currant wine, although I haven’t made any for
three years ever since I found out that the minister didn’t approve. I
just kept that bottle for sickness. There, there, child, don’t cry. I
can’t see as you were to blame although I’m sorry it happened so.”

“I must cry,” said Anne. “My heart is broken. The stars in their courses
fight against me, Marilla. Diana and I are parted forever. Oh, Marilla,
I little dreamed of this when first we swore our vows of friendship.”

“Don’t be foolish, Anne. Mrs. Barry will think better of it when she
finds you’re not to blame. I suppose she thinks you’ve done it for a
silly joke or something of that sort. You’d best go up this evening and
tell her how it was.”

“My courage fails me at the thought of facing Diana’s injured mother,”
 sighed Anne. “I wish you’d go, Marilla. You’re so much more dignified
than I am. Likely she’d listen to you quicker than to me.”

“Well, I will,” said Marilla, reflecting that it would probably be the
wiser course. “Don’t cry any more, Anne. It will be all right.”

Marilla had changed her mind about it being all right by the time she
got back from Orchard Slope. Anne was watching for her coming and flew
to the porch door to meet her.

“Oh, Marilla, I know by your face that it’s been no use,” she said
sorrowfully. “Mrs. Barry won’t forgive me?”

“Mrs. Barry indeed!” snapped Marilla. “Of all the unreasonable women
I ever saw she’s the worst. I told her it was all a mistake and you
weren’t to blame, but she just simply didn’t believe me. And she rubbed
it well in about my currant wine and how I’d always said it couldn’t
have the least effect on anybody. I just told her plainly that currant
wine wasn’t meant to be drunk three tumblerfuls at a time and that if a
child I had to do with was so greedy I’d sober her up with a right good
spanking.”

Marilla whisked into the kitchen, grievously disturbed, leaving a very
much distracted little soul in the porch behind her. Presently Anne
stepped out bareheaded into the chill autumn dusk; very determinedly and
steadily she took her way down through the sere clover field over the
log bridge and up through the spruce grove, lighted by a pale little
moon hanging low over the western woods. Mrs. Barry, coming to the door
in answer to a timid knock, found a white-lipped eager-eyed suppliant on
the doorstep.

Her face hardened. Mrs. Barry was a woman of strong prejudices and
dislikes, and her anger was of the cold, sullen sort which is always
hardest to overcome. To do her justice, she really believed Anne had
made Diana drunk out of sheer malice prepense, and she was honestly
anxious to preserve her little daughter from the contamination of
further intimacy with such a child.

“What do you want?” she said stiffly.

Anne clasped her hands.

“Oh, Mrs. Barry, please forgive me. I did not mean to--to--intoxicate
Diana. How could I? Just imagine if you were a poor little orphan girl
that kind people had adopted and you had just one bosom friend in all
the world. Do you think you would intoxicate her on purpose? I thought
it was only raspberry cordial. I was firmly convinced it was raspberry
cordial. Oh, please don’t say that you won’t let Diana play with me any
more. If you do you will cover my life with a dark cloud of woe.”

This speech which would have softened good Mrs. Lynde’s heart in a
twinkling, had no effect on Mrs. Barry except to irritate her still
more. She was suspicious of Anne’s big words and dramatic gestures and
imagined that the child was making fun of her. So she said, coldly and
cruelly:

“I don’t think you are a fit little girl for Diana to associate with.
You’d better go home and behave yourself.”

Anne’s lips quivered.

“Won’t you let me see Diana just once to say farewell?” she implored.

“Diana has gone over to Carmody with her father,” said Mrs. Barry, going
in and shutting the door.

Anne went back to Green Gables calm with despair.

“My last hope is gone,” she told Marilla. “I went up and saw Mrs. Barry
myself and she treated me very insultingly. Marilla, I do _not_ think she
is a well-bred woman. There is nothing more to do except to pray and I
haven’t much hope that that’ll do much good because, Marilla, I do not
believe that God Himself can do very much with such an obstinate person
as Mrs. Barry.”

“Anne, you shouldn’t say such things” rebuked Marilla, striving to
overcome that unholy tendency to laughter which she was dismayed to find
growing upon her. And indeed, when she told the whole story to Matthew
that night, she did laugh heartily over Anne’s tribulations.

But when she slipped into the east gable before going to bed and found
that Anne had cried herself to sleep an unaccustomed softness crept into
her face.

“Poor little soul,” she murmured, lifting a loose curl of hair from the
child’s tear-stained face. Then she bent down and kissed the flushed
cheek on the pillow.


CHAPTER XVII. A New Interest in Life


|THE next afternoon Anne, bending over her patchwork at the kitchen
window, happened to glance out and beheld Diana down by the Dryad’s
Bubble beckoning mysteriously. In a trice Anne was out of the house
and flying down to the hollow, astonishment and hope struggling in
her expressive eyes. But the hope faded when she saw Diana’s dejected
countenance.

“Your mother hasn’t relented?” she gasped.

Diana shook her head mournfully.

“No; and oh, Anne, she says I’m never to play with you again. I’ve cried
and cried and I told her it wasn’t your fault, but it wasn’t any use. I
had ever such a time coaxing her to let me come down and say good-bye to
you. She said I was only to stay ten minutes and she’s timing me by the
clock.”

“Ten minutes isn’t very long to say an eternal farewell in,” said Anne
tearfully. “Oh, Diana, will you promise faithfully never to forget
me, the friend of your youth, no matter what dearer friends may caress
thee?”

“Indeed I will,” sobbed Diana, “and I’ll never have another bosom
friend--I don’t want to have. I couldn’t love anybody as I love you.”

“Oh, Diana,” cried Anne, clasping her hands, “do you _love_ me?”

“Why, of course I do. Didn’t you know that?”

“No.” Anne drew a long breath. “I thought you _liked_ me of course but I
never hoped you _loved_ me. Why, Diana, I didn’t think anybody could
love me. Nobody ever has loved me since I can remember. Oh, this is
wonderful! It’s a ray of light which will forever shine on the darkness
of a path severed from thee, Diana. Oh, just say it once again.”

“I love you devotedly, Anne,” said Diana stanchly, “and I always will,
you may be sure of that.”

“And I will always love thee, Diana,” said Anne, solemnly extending her
hand. “In the years to come thy memory will shine like a star over my
lonely life, as that last story we read together says. Diana, wilt
thou give me a lock of thy jet-black tresses in parting to treasure
forevermore?”

“Have you got anything to cut it with?” queried Diana, wiping away the
tears which Anne’s affecting accents had caused to flow afresh, and
returning to practicalities.

“Yes. I’ve got my patchwork scissors in my apron pocket fortunately,”
 said Anne. She solemnly clipped one of Diana’s curls. “Fare thee well,
my beloved friend. Henceforth we must be as strangers though living side
by side. But my heart will ever be faithful to thee.”

Anne stood and watched Diana out of sight, mournfully waving her hand
to the latter whenever she turned to look back. Then she returned to
the house, not a little consoled for the time being by this romantic
parting.

“It is all over,” she informed Marilla. “I shall never have another
friend. I’m really worse off than ever before, for I haven’t Katie
Maurice and Violetta now. And even if I had it wouldn’t be the same.
Somehow, little dream girls are not satisfying after a real friend.
Diana and I had such an affecting farewell down by the spring. It will
be sacred in my memory forever. I used the most pathetic language I
could think of and said ‘thou’ and ‘thee.’ ‘Thou’ and ‘thee’ seem so
much more romantic than ‘you.’ Diana gave me a lock of her hair and I’m
going to sew it up in a little bag and wear it around my neck all my
life. Please see that it is buried with me, for I don’t believe I’ll
live very long. Perhaps when she sees me lying cold and dead before her
Mrs. Barry may feel remorse for what she has done and will let Diana
come to my funeral.”

“I don’t think there is much fear of your dying of grief as long as you
can talk, Anne,” said Marilla unsympathetically.

The following Monday Anne surprised Marilla by coming down from her room
with her basket of books on her arm and hip and her lips primmed up into
a line of determination.

“I’m going back to school,” she announced. “That is all there is left
in life for me, now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from me. In
school I can look at her and muse over days departed.”

“You’d better muse over your lessons and sums,” said Marilla, concealing
her delight at this development of the situation. “If you’re going back
to school I hope we’ll hear no more of breaking slates over people’s
heads and such carryings on. Behave yourself and do just what your
teacher tells you.”

“I’ll try to be a model pupil,” agreed Anne dolefully. “There won’t be
much fun in it, I expect. Mr. Phillips said Minnie Andrews was a model
pupil and there isn’t a spark of imagination or life in her. She is
just dull and poky and never seems to have a good time. But I feel so
depressed that perhaps it will come easy to me now. I’m going round by
the road. I couldn’t bear to go by the Birch Path all alone. I should
weep bitter tears if I did.”

Anne was welcomed back to school with open arms. Her imagination had
been sorely missed in games, her voice in the singing and her dramatic
ability in the perusal aloud of books at dinner hour. Ruby Gillis
smuggled three blue plums over to her during testament reading; Ella May
MacPherson gave her an enormous yellow pansy cut from the covers of a
floral catalogue--a species of desk decoration much prized in Avonlea
school. Sophia Sloane offered to teach her a perfectly elegant new
pattern of knit lace, so nice for trimming aprons. Katie Boulter gave
her a perfume bottle to keep slate water in, and Julia Bell copied
carefully on a piece of pale pink paper scalloped on the edges the
following effusion:


  When twilight drops her curtain down
  And pins it with a star
  Remember that you have a friend
  Though she may wander far.


“It’s so nice to be appreciated,” sighed Anne rapturously to Marilla
that night.

The girls were not the only scholars who “appreciated” her. When Anne
went to her seat after dinner hour--she had been told by Mr. Phillips to
sit with the model Minnie Andrews--she found on her desk a big luscious
“strawberry apple.” Anne caught it up all ready to take a bite when she
remembered that the only place in Avonlea where strawberry apples grew
was in the old Blythe orchard on the other side of the Lake of Shining
Waters. Anne dropped the apple as if it were a red-hot coal and
ostentatiously wiped her fingers on her handkerchief. The apple lay
untouched on her desk until the next morning, when little Timothy
Andrews, who swept the school and kindled the fire, annexed it as one
of his perquisites. Charlie Sloane’s slate pencil, gorgeously bedizened
with striped red and yellow paper, costing two cents where ordinary
pencils cost only one, which he sent up to her after dinner hour, met
with a more favorable reception. Anne was graciously pleased to accept
it and rewarded the donor with a smile which exalted that infatuated
youth straightway into the seventh heaven of delight and caused him to
make such fearful errors in his dictation that Mr. Phillips kept him in
after school to rewrite it.

But as,

  The Caesar’s pageant shorn of Brutus’ bust
  Did but of Rome’s best son remind her more,

so the marked absence of any tribute or recognition from Diana Barry who
was sitting with Gertie Pye embittered Anne’s little triumph.

“Diana might just have smiled at me once, I think,” she mourned to
Marilla that night. But the next morning a note most fearfully and
wonderfully twisted and folded, and a small parcel were passed across to
Anne.

Dear Anne (ran the former)


Mother says I’m not to play with you or talk to you even in school. It
isn’t my fault and don’t be cross at me, because I love you as much
as ever. I miss you awfully to tell all my secrets to and I don’t like
Gertie Pye one bit. I made you one of the new bookmarkers out of red
tissue paper. They are awfully fashionable now and only three girls in
school know how to make them. When you look at it remember

Your true friend

Diana Barry.


Anne read the note, kissed the bookmark, and dispatched a prompt reply
back to the other side of the school.


My own darling Diana:--

Of course I am not cross at you because you have to obey your mother.
Our spirits can commune. I shall keep your lovely present forever.
Minnie Andrews is a very nice little girl--although she has no
imagination--but after having been Diana’s busum friend I cannot be
Minnie’s. Please excuse mistakes because my spelling isn’t very good
yet, although much improoved.

Yours until death us do part

Anne or Cordelia Shirley.


P.S. I shall sleep with your letter under my pillow tonight. A. _or_ C.S.


Marilla pessimistically expected more trouble since Anne had again begun
to go to school. But none developed. Perhaps Anne caught something of
the “model” spirit from Minnie Andrews; at least she got on very well
with Mr. Phillips thenceforth. She flung herself into her studies heart
and soul, determined not to be outdone in any class by Gilbert Blythe.
The rivalry between them was soon apparent; it was entirely good natured
on Gilbert’s side; but it is much to be feared that the same thing
cannot be said of Anne, who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tenacity for
holding grudges. She was as intense in her hatreds as in her loves. She
would not stoop to admit that she meant to rival Gilbert in schoolwork,
because that would have been to acknowledge his existence which Anne
persistently ignored; but the rivalry was there and honors fluctuated
between them. Now Gilbert was head of the spelling class; now Anne, with
a toss of her long red braids, spelled him down. One morning Gilbert had
all his sums done correctly and had his name written on the blackboard
on the roll of honor; the next morning Anne, having wrestled wildly with
decimals the entire evening before, would be first. One awful day they
were ties and their names were written up together. It was almost as bad
as a take-notice and Anne’s mortification was as evident as Gilbert’s
satisfaction. When the written examinations at the end of each month
were held the suspense was terrible. The first month Gilbert came out
three marks ahead. The second Anne beat him by five. But her triumph was
marred by the fact that Gilbert congratulated her heartily before the
whole school. It would have been ever so much sweeter to her if he had
felt the sting of his defeat.

Mr. Phillips might not be a very good teacher; but a pupil so inflexibly
determined on learning as Anne was could hardly escape making progress
under any kind of teacher. By the end of the term Anne and Gilbert were
both promoted into the fifth class and allowed to begin studying the
elements of “the branches”--by which Latin, geometry, French, and
algebra were meant. In geometry Anne met her Waterloo.

“It’s perfectly awful stuff, Marilla,” she groaned. “I’m sure I’ll never
be able to make head or tail of it. There is no scope for imagination in
it at all. Mr. Phillips says I’m the worst dunce he ever saw at it.
And Gil--I mean some of the others are so smart at it. It is extremely
mortifying, Marilla.

“Even Diana gets along better than I do. But I don’t mind being beaten
by Diana. Even although we meet as strangers now I still love her with
an _inextinguishable_ love. It makes me very sad at times to think about
her. But really, Marilla, one can’t stay sad very long in such an
interesting world, can one?”


CHAPTER XVIII. Anne to the Rescue


|ALL things great are wound up with all things little. At first glance
it might not seem that the decision of a certain Canadian Premier to
include Prince Edward Island in a political tour could have much or
anything to do with the fortunes of little Anne Shirley at Green Gables.
But it had.

It was a January the Premier came, to address his loyal supporters and
such of his nonsupporters as chose to be present at the monster mass
meeting held in Charlottetown. Most of the Avonlea people were on
Premier’s side of politics; hence on the night of the meeting nearly
all the men and a goodly proportion of the women had gone to town thirty
miles away. Mrs. Rachel Lynde had gone too. Mrs. Rachel Lynde was a
red-hot politician and couldn’t have believed that the political rally
could be carried through without her, although she was on the opposite
side of politics. So she went to town and took her husband--Thomas would
be useful in looking after the horse--and Marilla Cuthbert with her.
Marilla had a sneaking interest in politics herself, and as she thought
it might be her only chance to see a real live Premier, she promptly
took it, leaving Anne and Matthew to keep house until her return the
following day.

Hence, while Marilla and Mrs. Rachel were enjoying themselves hugely
at the mass meeting, Anne and Matthew had the cheerful kitchen at Green
Gables all to themselves. A bright fire was glowing in the old-fashioned
Waterloo stove and blue-white frost crystals were shining on the
windowpanes. Matthew nodded over a _Farmers’ Advocate_ on the sofa and
Anne at the table studied her lessons with grim determination, despite
sundry wistful glances at the clock shelf, where lay a new book that
Jane Andrews had lent her that day. Jane had assured her that it was
warranted to produce any number of thrills, or words to that effect, and
Anne’s fingers tingled to reach out for it. But that would mean Gilbert
Blythe’s triumph on the morrow. Anne turned her back on the clock shelf
and tried to imagine it wasn’t there.

“Matthew, did you ever study geometry when you went to school?”

“Well now, no, I didn’t,” said Matthew, coming out of his doze with a
start.

“I wish you had,” sighed Anne, “because then you’d be able to sympathize
with me. You can’t sympathize properly if you’ve never studied it. It is
casting a cloud over my whole life. I’m such a dunce at it, Matthew.”

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew soothingly. “I guess you’re all right
at anything. Mr. Phillips told me last week in Blair’s store at Carmody
that you was the smartest scholar in school and was making rapid
progress. ‘Rapid progress’ was his very words. There’s them as runs down
Teddy Phillips and says he ain’t much of a teacher, but I guess he’s all
right.”

Matthew would have thought anyone who praised Anne was “all right.”

“I’m sure I’d get on better with geometry if only he wouldn’t change
the letters,” complained Anne. “I learn the proposition off by heart and
then he draws it on the blackboard and puts different letters from what
are in the book and I get all mixed up. I don’t think a teacher should
take such a mean advantage, do you? We’re studying agriculture now and
I’ve found out at last what makes the roads red. It’s a great comfort.
I wonder how Marilla and Mrs. Lynde are enjoying themselves. Mrs. Lynde
says Canada is going to the dogs the way things are being run at Ottawa
and that it’s an awful warning to the electors. She says if women were
allowed to vote we would soon see a blessed change. What way do you
vote, Matthew?”

“Conservative,” said Matthew promptly. To vote Conservative was part of
Matthew’s religion.

“Then I’m Conservative too,” said Anne decidedly. “I’m glad because
Gil--because some of the boys in school are Grits. I guess Mr. Phillips
is a Grit too because Prissy Andrews’s father is one, and Ruby Gillis
says that when a man is courting he always has to agree with the girl’s
mother in religion and her father in politics. Is that true, Matthew?”

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew.

“Did you ever go courting, Matthew?”

“Well now, no, I dunno’s I ever did,” said Matthew, who had certainly
never thought of such a thing in his whole existence.

Anne reflected with her chin in her hands.

“It must be rather interesting, don’t you think, Matthew? Ruby Gillis
says when she grows up she’s going to have ever so many beaus on the
string and have them all crazy about her; but I think that would be too
exciting. I’d rather have just one in his right mind. But Ruby Gillis
knows a great deal about such matters because she has so many big
sisters, and Mrs. Lynde says the Gillis girls have gone off like hot
cakes. Mr. Phillips goes up to see Prissy Andrews nearly every evening.
He says it is to help her with her lessons but Miranda Sloane is
studying for Queen’s too, and I should think she needed help a lot more
than Prissy because she’s ever so much stupider, but he never goes to
help her in the evenings at all. There are a great many things in this
world that I can’t understand very well, Matthew.”

“Well now, I dunno as I comprehend them all myself,” acknowledged
Matthew.

“Well, I suppose I must finish up my lessons. I won’t allow myself to
open that new book Jane lent me until I’m through. But it’s a terrible
temptation, Matthew. Even when I turn my back on it I can see it there
just as plain. Jane said she cried herself sick over it. I love a book
that makes me cry. But I think I’ll carry that book into the sitting
room and lock it in the jam closet and give you the key. And you must
_not_ give it to me, Matthew, until my lessons are done, not even if
I implore you on my bended knees. It’s all very well to say resist
temptation, but it’s ever so much easier to resist it if you can’t get
the key. And then shall I run down the cellar and get some russets,
Matthew? Wouldn’t you like some russets?”

“Well now, I dunno but what I would,” said Matthew, who never ate
russets but knew Anne’s weakness for them.

Just as Anne emerged triumphantly from the cellar with her plateful of
russets came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy board walk outside
and the next moment the kitchen door was flung open and in rushed Diana
Barry, white faced and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around
her head. Anne promptly let go of her candle and plate in her surprise,
and plate, candle, and apples crashed together down the cellar ladder
and were found at the bottom embedded in melted grease, the next day,
by Marilla, who gathered them up and thanked mercy the house hadn’t been
set on fire.

“Whatever is the matter, Diana?” cried Anne. “Has your mother relented
at last?”

“Oh, Anne, do come quick,” implored Diana nervously. “Minnie May is
awful sick--she’s got croup. Young Mary Joe says--and Father and Mother
are away to town and there’s nobody to go for the doctor. Minnie May is
awful bad and Young Mary Joe doesn’t know what to do--and oh, Anne, I’m
so scared!”

Matthew, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, slipped past
Diana and away into the darkness of the yard.

“He’s gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor,”
 said Anne, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. “I know it as well as
if he’d said so. Matthew and I are such kindred spirits I can read his
thoughts without words at all.”

“I don’t believe he’ll find the doctor at Carmody,” sobbed Diana. “I
know that Dr. Blair went to town and I guess Dr. Spencer would go too.
Young Mary Joe never saw anybody with croup and Mrs. Lynde is away. Oh,
Anne!”

“Don’t cry, Di,” said Anne cheerily. “I know exactly what to do for
croup. You forget that Mrs. Hammond had twins three times. When you look
after three pairs of twins you naturally get a lot of experience. They
all had croup regularly. Just wait till I get the ipecac bottle--you
mayn’t have any at your house. Come on now.”

The two little girls hastened out hand in hand and hurried through
Lover’s Lane and across the crusted field beyond, for the snow was too
deep to go by the shorter wood way. Anne, although sincerely sorry
for Minnie May, was far from being insensible to the romance of the
situation and to the sweetness of once more sharing that romance with a
kindred spirit.

The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy
slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the
dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the
wind whistling through them. Anne thought it was truly delightful to go
skimming through all this mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend
who had been so long estranged.

Minnie May, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen
sofa feverish and restless, while her hoarse breathing could be heard
all over the house. Young Mary Joe, a buxom, broad-faced French girl
from the creek, whom Mrs. Barry had engaged to stay with the children
during her absence, was helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of
thinking what to do, or doing it if she thought of it.

Anne went to work with skill and promptness.

“Minnie May has croup all right; she’s pretty bad, but I’ve seen them
worse. First we must have lots of hot water. I declare, Diana, there
isn’t more than a cupful in the kettle! There, I’ve filled it up, and,
Mary Joe, you may put some wood in the stove. I don’t want to hurt your
feelings but it seems to me you might have thought of this before if
you’d any imagination. Now, I’ll undress Minnie May and put her to bed
and you try to find some soft flannel cloths, Diana. I’m going to give
her a dose of ipecac first of all.”

Minnie May did not take kindly to the ipecac but Anne had not brought up
three pairs of twins for nothing. Down that ipecac went, not only once,
but many times during the long, anxious night when the two little girls
worked patiently over the suffering Minnie May, and Young Mary Joe,
honestly anxious to do all she could, kept up a roaring fire and heated
more water than would have been needed for a hospital of croupy babies.

It was three o’clock when Matthew came with a doctor, for he had been
obliged to go all the way to Spencervale for one. But the pressing need
for assistance was past. Minnie May was much better and was sleeping
soundly.

“I was awfully near giving up in despair,” explained Anne. “She got
worse and worse until she was sicker than ever the Hammond twins were,
even the last pair. I actually thought she was going to choke to death.
I gave her every drop of ipecac in that bottle and when the last dose
went down I said to myself--not to Diana or Young Mary Joe, because I
didn’t want to worry them any more than they were worried, but I had
to say it to myself just to relieve my feelings--‘This is the last
lingering hope and I fear, tis a vain one.’ But in about three minutes
she coughed up the phlegm and began to get better right away. You must
just imagine my relief, doctor, because I can’t express it in words. You
know there are some things that cannot be expressed in words.”

“Yes, I know,” nodded the doctor. He looked at Anne as if he were
thinking some things about her that couldn’t be expressed in words.
Later on, however, he expressed them to Mr. and Mrs. Barry.

“That little redheaded girl they have over at Cuthbert’s is as smart as
they make ‘em. I tell you she saved that baby’s life, for it would have
been too late by the time I got there. She seems to have a skill and
presence of mind perfectly wonderful in a child of her age. I never saw
anything like the eyes of her when she was explaining the case to me.”

Anne had gone home in the wonderful, white-frosted winter morning, heavy
eyed from loss of sleep, but still talking unweariedly to Matthew as
they crossed the long white field and walked under the glittering fairy
arch of the Lover’s Lane maples.

“Oh, Matthew, isn’t it a wonderful morning? The world looks like
something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it? Those
trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath--pouf! I’m so glad
I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren’t you? And I’m so
glad Mrs. Hammond had three pairs of twins after all. If she hadn’t I
mightn’t have known what to do for Minnie May. I’m real sorry I was
ever cross with Mrs. Hammond for having twins. But, oh, Matthew, I’m so
sleepy. I can’t go to school. I just know I couldn’t keep my eyes open
and I’d be so stupid. But I hate to stay home, for Gil--some of
the others will get head of the class, and it’s so hard to get up
again--although of course the harder it is the more satisfaction you
have when you do get up, haven’t you?”

“Well now, I guess you’ll manage all right,” said Matthew, looking at
Anne’s white little face and the dark shadows under her eyes. “You just
go right to bed and have a good sleep. I’ll do all the chores.”

Anne accordingly went to bed and slept so long and soundly that it
was well on in the white and rosy winter afternoon when she awoke and
descended to the kitchen where Marilla, who had arrived home in the
meantime, was sitting knitting.

“Oh, did you see the Premier?” exclaimed Anne at once. “What did he look
like Marilla?”

“Well, he never got to be Premier on account of his looks,” said
Marilla. “Such a nose as that man had! But he can speak. I was proud of
being a Conservative. Rachel Lynde, of course, being a Liberal, had no
use for him. Your dinner is in the oven, Anne, and you can get yourself
some blue plum preserve out of the pantry. I guess you’re hungry.
Matthew has been telling me about last night. I must say it was
fortunate you knew what to do. I wouldn’t have had any idea myself, for
I never saw a case of croup. There now, never mind talking till you’ve
had your dinner. I can tell by the look of you that you’re just full up
with speeches, but they’ll keep.”

Marilla had something to tell Anne, but she did not tell it just then
for she knew if she did Anne’s consequent excitement would lift her
clear out of the region of such material matters as appetite or dinner.
Not until Anne had finished her saucer of blue plums did Marilla say:

“Mrs. Barry was here this afternoon, Anne. She wanted to see you, but I
wouldn’t wake you up. She says you saved Minnie May’s life, and she is
very sorry she acted as she did in that affair of the currant wine. She
says she knows now you didn’t mean to set Diana drunk, and she hopes
you’ll forgive her and be good friends with Diana again. You’re to go
over this evening if you like for Diana can’t stir outside the door
on account of a bad cold she caught last night. Now, Anne Shirley, for
pity’s sake don’t fly up into the air.”

The warning seemed not unnecessary, so uplifted and aerial was Anne’s
expression and attitude as she sprang to her feet, her face irradiated
with the flame of her spirit.

“Oh, Marilla, can I go right now--without washing my dishes? I’ll wash
them when I come back, but I cannot tie myself down to anything so
unromantic as dishwashing at this thrilling moment.”

“Yes, yes, run along,” said Marilla indulgently. “Anne Shirley--are you
crazy? Come back this instant and put something on you. I might as well
call to the wind. She’s gone without a cap or wrap. Look at her tearing
through the orchard with her hair streaming. It’ll be a mercy if she
doesn’t catch her death of cold.”

Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy
places. Afar in the southwest was the great shimmering, pearl-like
sparkle of an evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal
rose over gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce. The tinkles
of sleigh bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through
the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne’s
heart and on her lips.

“You see before you a perfectly happy person, Marilla,” she announced.
“I’m perfectly happy--yes, in spite of my red hair. Just at present I
have a soul above red hair. Mrs. Barry kissed me and cried and said she
was so sorry and she could never repay me. I felt fearfully embarrassed,
Marilla, but I just said as politely as I could, ‘I have no hard
feelings for you, Mrs. Barry. I assure you once for all that I did not
mean to intoxicate Diana and henceforth I shall cover the past with the
mantle of oblivion.’ That was a pretty dignified way of speaking wasn’t
it, Marilla?”

“I felt that I was heaping coals of fire on Mrs. Barry’s head. And Diana
and I had a lovely afternoon. Diana showed me a new fancy crochet stitch
her aunt over at Carmody taught her. Not a soul in Avonlea knows it but
us, and we pledged a solemn vow never to reveal it to anyone else. Diana
gave me a beautiful card with a wreath of roses on it and a verse of
poetry:”

      “If you love me as I love you
      Nothing but death can part us two.”

“And that is true, Marilla. We’re going to ask Mr. Phillips to let us
sit together in school again, and Gertie Pye can go with Minnie Andrews.
We had an elegant tea. Mrs. Barry had the very best china set out,
Marilla, just as if I was real company. I can’t tell you what a thrill
it gave me. Nobody ever used their very best china on my account before.
And we had fruit cake and pound cake and doughnuts and two kinds of
preserves, Marilla. And Mrs. Barry asked me if I took tea and said ‘Pa,
why don’t you pass the biscuits to Anne?’ It must be lovely to be grown
up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Marilla, with a brief sigh.

“Well, anyway, when I am grown up,” said Anne decidedly, “I’m always
going to talk to little girls as if they were too, and I’ll never laugh
when they use big words. I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts
one’s feelings. After tea Diana and I made taffy. The taffy wasn’t very
good, I suppose because neither Diana nor I had ever made any before.
Diana left me to stir it while she buttered the plates and I forgot and
let it burn; and then when we set it out on the platform to cool the cat
walked over one plate and that had to be thrown away. But the making of
it was splendid fun. Then when I came home Mrs. Barry asked me to come
over as often as I could and Diana stood at the window and threw kisses
to me all the way down to Lover’s Lane. I assure you, Marilla, that I
feel like praying tonight and I’m going to think out a special brand-new
prayer in honor of the occasion.”


CHAPTER XIX. A Concert a Catastrophe and a Confession


|MARILLA, can I go over to see Diana just for a minute?” asked Anne,
running breathlessly down from the east gable one February evening.

“I don’t see what you want to be traipsing about after dark for,” said
Marilla shortly. “You and Diana walked home from school together and
then stood down there in the snow for half an hour more, your tongues
going the whole blessed time, clickety-clack. So I don’t think you’re
very badly off to see her again.”

“But she wants to see me,” pleaded Anne. “She has something very
important to tell me.”

“How do you know she has?”

“Because she just signaled to me from her window. We have arranged a
way to signal with our candles and cardboard. We set the candle on the
window sill and make flashes by passing the cardboard back and forth. So
many flashes mean a certain thing. It was my idea, Marilla.”

“I’ll warrant you it was,” said Marilla emphatically. “And the next
thing you’ll be setting fire to the curtains with your signaling
nonsense.”

“Oh, we’re very careful, Marilla. And it’s so interesting. Two flashes
mean, ‘Are you there?’ Three mean ‘yes’ and four ‘no.’ Five mean, ‘Come
over as soon as possible, because I have something important to reveal.’
Diana has just signaled five flashes, and I’m really suffering to know
what it is.”

“Well, you needn’t suffer any longer,” said Marilla sarcastically. “You
can go, but you’re to be back here in just ten minutes, remember that.”

Anne did remember it and was back in the stipulated time, although
probably no mortal will ever know just what it cost her to confine the
discussion of Diana’s important communication within the limits of ten
minutes. But at least she had made good use of them.

“Oh, Marilla, what do you think? You know tomorrow is Diana’s birthday.
Well, her mother told her she could ask me to go home with her from
school and stay all night with her. And her cousins are coming over from
Newbridge in a big pung sleigh to go to the Debating Club concert at
the hall tomorrow night. And they are going to take Diana and me to the
concert--if you’ll let me go, that is. You will, won’t you, Marilla? Oh,
I feel so excited.”

“You can calm down then, because you’re not going. You’re better at home
in your own bed, and as for that club concert, it’s all nonsense, and
little girls should not be allowed to go out to such places at all.”

“I’m sure the Debating Club is a most respectable affair,” pleaded Anne.

“I’m not saying it isn’t. But you’re not going to begin gadding about
to concerts and staying out all hours of the night. Pretty doings for
children. I’m surprised at Mrs. Barry’s letting Diana go.”

“But it’s such a very special occasion,” mourned Anne, on the verge of
tears. “Diana has only one birthday in a year. It isn’t as if birthdays
were common things, Marilla. Prissy Andrews is going to recite ‘Curfew
Must Not Ring Tonight.’ That is such a good moral piece, Marilla, I’m
sure it would do me lots of good to hear it. And the choir are going to
sing four lovely pathetic songs that are pretty near as good as hymns.
And oh, Marilla, the minister is going to take part; yes, indeed, he is;
he’s going to give an address. That will be just about the same thing as
a sermon. Please, mayn’t I go, Marilla?”

“You heard what I said, Anne, didn’t you? Take off your boots now and go
to bed. It’s past eight.”

“There’s just one more thing, Marilla,” said Anne, with the air of
producing the last shot in her locker. “Mrs. Barry told Diana that we
might sleep in the spare-room bed. Think of the honor of your little
Anne being put in the spare-room bed.”

“It’s an honor you’ll have to get along without. Go to bed, Anne, and
don’t let me hear another word out of you.”

When Anne, with tears rolling over her cheeks, had gone sorrowfully
upstairs, Matthew, who had been apparently sound asleep on the lounge
during the whole dialogue, opened his eyes and said decidedly:

“Well now, Marilla, I think you ought to let Anne go.”

“I don’t then,” retorted Marilla. “Who’s bringing this child up,
Matthew, you or me?”

“Well now, you,” admitted Matthew.

“Don’t interfere then.”

“Well now, I ain’t interfering. It ain’t interfering to have your own
opinion. And my opinion is that you ought to let Anne go.”

“You’d think I ought to let Anne go to the moon if she took the notion,
I’ve no doubt” was Marilla’s amiable rejoinder. “I might have let her
spend the night with Diana, if that was all. But I don’t approve of this
concert plan. She’d go there and catch cold like as not, and have her
head filled up with nonsense and excitement. It would unsettle her for
a week. I understand that child’s disposition and what’s good for it
better than you, Matthew.”

“I think you ought to let Anne go,” repeated Matthew firmly. Argument
was not his strong point, but holding fast to his opinion certainly was.
Marilla gave a gasp of helplessness and took refuge in silence. The
next morning, when Anne was washing the breakfast dishes in the pantry,
Matthew paused on his way out to the barn to say to Marilla again:

“I think you ought to let Anne go, Marilla.”

For a moment Marilla looked things not lawful to be uttered. Then she
yielded to the inevitable and said tartly:

“Very well, she can go, since nothing else ‘ll please you.”

Anne flew out of the pantry, dripping dishcloth in hand.

“Oh, Marilla, Marilla, say those blessed words again.”

“I guess once is enough to say them. This is Matthew’s doings and I
wash my hands of it. If you catch pneumonia sleeping in a strange bed or
coming out of that hot hall in the middle of the night, don’t blame me,
blame Matthew. Anne Shirley, you’re dripping greasy water all over the
floor. I never saw such a careless child.”

“Oh, I know I’m a great trial to you, Marilla,” said Anne repentantly.
“I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I
don’t make, although I might. I’ll get some sand and scrub up the spots
before I go to school. Oh, Marilla, my heart was just set on going to
that concert. I never was to a concert in my life, and when the other
girls talk about them in school I feel so out of it. You didn’t know
just how I felt about it, but you see Matthew did. Matthew understands
me, and it’s so nice to be understood, Marilla.”

Anne was too excited to do herself justice as to lessons that morning in
school. Gilbert Blythe spelled her down in class and left her clear out
of sight in mental arithmetic. Anne’s consequent humiliation was
less than it might have been, however, in view of the concert and the
spare-room bed. She and Diana talked so constantly about it all day that
with a stricter teacher than Mr. Phillips dire disgrace must inevitably
have been their portion.

Anne felt that she could not have borne it if she had not been going
to the concert, for nothing else was discussed that day in school. The
Avonlea Debating Club, which met fortnightly all winter, had had several
smaller free entertainments; but this was to be a big affair, admission
ten cents, in aid of the library. The Avonlea young people had been
practicing for weeks, and all the scholars were especially interested in
it by reason of older brothers and sisters who were going to take part.
Everybody in school over nine years of age expected to go, except Carrie
Sloane, whose father shared Marilla’s opinions about small girls going
out to night concerts. Carrie Sloane cried into her grammar all the
afternoon and felt that life was not worth living.

For Anne the real excitement began with the dismissal of school and
increased therefrom in crescendo until it reached to a crash of positive
ecstasy in the concert itself. They had a “perfectly elegant tea;” and
then came the delicious occupation of dressing in Diana’s little room
upstairs. Diana did Anne’s front hair in the new pompadour style and
Anne tied Diana’s bows with the especial knack she possessed; and they
experimented with at least half a dozen different ways of arranging
their back hair. At last they were ready, cheeks scarlet and eyes
glowing with excitement.

True, Anne could not help a little pang when she contrasted her plain
black tam and shapeless, tight-sleeved, homemade gray-cloth coat with
Diana’s jaunty fur cap and smart little jacket. But she remembered in
time that she had an imagination and could use it.

Then Diana’s cousins, the Murrays from Newbridge, came; they all crowded
into the big pung sleigh, among straw and furry robes. Anne reveled in
the drive to the hall, slipping along over the satin-smooth roads with
the snow crisping under the runners. There was a magnificent sunset, and
the snowy hills and deep-blue water of the St. Lawrence Gulf seemed to
rim in the splendor like a huge bowl of pearl and sapphire brimmed with
wine and fire. Tinkles of sleigh bells and distant laughter, that seemed
like the mirth of wood elves, came from every quarter.

“Oh, Diana,” breathed Anne, squeezing Diana’s mittened hand under the
fur robe, “isn’t it all like a beautiful dream? Do I really look the
same as usual? I feel so different that it seems to me it must show in
my looks.”

“You look awfully nice,” said Diana, who having just received a
compliment from one of her cousins, felt that she ought to pass it on.
“You’ve got the loveliest color.”

The program that night was a series of “thrills” for at least one
listener in the audience, and, as Anne assured Diana, every succeeding
thrill was thrillier than the last. When Prissy Andrews, attired in
a new pink-silk waist with a string of pearls about her smooth white
throat and real carnations in her hair--rumor whispered that the master
had sent all the way to town for them for her--“climbed the slimy
ladder, dark without one ray of light,” Anne shivered in luxurious
sympathy; when the choir sang “Far Above the Gentle Daisies” Anne gazed
at the ceiling as if it were frescoed with angels; when Sam Sloane
proceeded to explain and illustrate “How Sockery Set a Hen” Anne laughed
until people sitting near her laughed too, more out of sympathy with her
than with amusement at a selection that was rather threadbare even in
Avonlea; and when Mr. Phillips gave Mark Antony’s oration over the
dead body of Caesar in the most heart-stirring tones--looking at Prissy
Andrews at the end of every sentence--Anne felt that she could rise and
mutiny on the spot if but one Roman citizen led the way.

Only one number on the program failed to interest her. When Gilbert
Blythe recited “Bingen on the Rhine” Anne picked up Rhoda Murray’s
library book and read it until he had finished, when she sat rigidly
stiff and motionless while Diana clapped her hands until they tingled.

It was eleven when they got home, sated with dissipation, but with the
exceeding sweet pleasure of talking it all over still to come. Everybody
seemed asleep and the house was dark and silent. Anne and Diana tiptoed
into the parlor, a long narrow room out of which the spare room opened.
It was pleasantly warm and dimly lighted by the embers of a fire in the
grate.

“Let’s undress here,” said Diana. “It’s so nice and warm.”

“Hasn’t it been a delightful time?” sighed Anne rapturously. “It must
be splendid to get up and recite there. Do you suppose we will ever be
asked to do it, Diana?”

“Yes, of course, someday. They’re always wanting the big scholars to
recite. Gilbert Blythe does often and he’s only two years older than us.
Oh, Anne, how could you pretend not to listen to him? When he came to
the line,

           ‘_There’s Another_, not _a sister_,’

he looked right down at you.”

“Diana,” said Anne with dignity, “you are my bosom friend, but I cannot
allow even you to speak to me of that person. Are you ready for bed?
Let’s run a race and see who’ll get to the bed first.”

The suggestion appealed to Diana. The two little white-clad figures flew
down the long room, through the spare-room door, and bounded on the bed
at the same moment. And then--something--moved beneath them, there was a
gasp and a cry--and somebody said in muffled accents:

“Merciful goodness!”

Anne and Diana were never able to tell just how they got off that bed
and out of the room. They only knew that after one frantic rush they
found themselves tiptoeing shiveringly upstairs.

“Oh, who was it--_what_ was it?” whispered Anne, her teeth chattering with
cold and fright.

“It was Aunt Josephine,” said Diana, gasping with laughter. “Oh, Anne,
it was Aunt Josephine, however she came to be there. Oh, and I know she
will be furious. It’s dreadful--it’s really dreadful--but did you ever
know anything so funny, Anne?”

“Who is your Aunt Josephine?”

“She’s father’s aunt and she lives in Charlottetown. She’s awfully
old--seventy anyhow--and I don’t believe she was _ever_ a little girl. We
were expecting her out for a visit, but not so soon. She’s awfully prim
and proper and she’ll scold dreadfully about this, I know. Well, we’ll
have to sleep with Minnie May--and you can’t think how she kicks.”

Miss Josephine Barry did not appear at the early breakfast the next
morning. Mrs. Barry smiled kindly at the two little girls.

“Did you have a good time last night? I tried to stay awake until you
came home, for I wanted to tell you Aunt Josephine had come and that you
would have to go upstairs after all, but I was so tired I fell asleep. I
hope you didn’t disturb your aunt, Diana.”

Diana preserved a discreet silence, but she and Anne exchanged furtive
smiles of guilty amusement across the table. Anne hurried home after
breakfast and so remained in blissful ignorance of the disturbance which
presently resulted in the Barry household until the late afternoon, when
she went down to Mrs. Lynde’s on an errand for Marilla.

“So you and Diana nearly frightened poor old Miss Barry to death last
night?” said Mrs. Lynde severely, but with a twinkle in her eye. “Mrs.
Barry was here a few minutes ago on her way to Carmody. She’s feeling
real worried over it. Old Miss Barry was in a terrible temper when she
got up this morning--and Josephine Barry’s temper is no joke, I can tell
you that. She wouldn’t speak to Diana at all.”

“It wasn’t Diana’s fault,” said Anne contritely. “It was mine. I
suggested racing to see who would get into bed first.”

“I knew it!” said Mrs. Lynde, with the exultation of a correct guesser.
“I knew that idea came out of your head. Well, it’s made a nice lot of
trouble, that’s what. Old Miss Barry came out to stay for a month, but
she declares she won’t stay another day and is going right back to town
tomorrow, Sunday and all as it is. She’d have gone today if they could
have taken her. She had promised to pay for a quarter’s music lessons
for Diana, but now she is determined to do nothing at all for such a
tomboy. Oh, I guess they had a lively time of it there this morning. The
Barrys must feel cut up. Old Miss Barry is rich and they’d like to keep
on the good side of her. Of course, Mrs. Barry didn’t say just that to
me, but I’m a pretty good judge of human nature, that’s what.”

“I’m such an unlucky girl,” mourned Anne. “I’m always getting into
scrapes myself and getting my best friends--people I’d shed my heart’s
blood for--into them too. Can you tell me why it is so, Mrs. Lynde?”

“It’s because you’re too heedless and impulsive, child, that’s what. You
never stop to think--whatever comes into your head to say or do you say
or do it without a moment’s reflection.”

“Oh, but that’s the best of it,” protested Anne. “Something just flashes
into your mind, so exciting, and you must out with it. If you stop to
think it over you spoil it all. Haven’t you never felt that yourself,
Mrs. Lynde?”

No, Mrs. Lynde had not. She shook her head sagely.

“You must learn to think a little, Anne, that’s what. The proverb you
need to go by is ‘Look before you leap’--especially into spare-room
beds.”

Mrs. Lynde laughed comfortably over her mild joke, but Anne remained
pensive. She saw nothing to laugh at in the situation, which to her
eyes appeared very serious. When she left Mrs. Lynde’s she took her way
across the crusted fields to Orchard Slope. Diana met her at the kitchen
door.

“Your Aunt Josephine was very cross about it, wasn’t she?” whispered
Anne.

“Yes,” answered Diana, stifling a giggle with an apprehensive glance
over her shoulder at the closed sitting-room door. “She was fairly
dancing with rage, Anne. Oh, how she scolded. She said I was the
worst-behaved girl she ever saw and that my parents ought to be ashamed
of the way they had brought me up. She says she won’t stay and I’m sure
I don’t care. But Father and Mother do.”

“Why didn’t you tell them it was my fault?” demanded Anne.

“It’s likely I’d do such a thing, isn’t it?” said Diana with just scorn.
“I’m no telltale, Anne Shirley, and anyhow I was just as much to blame
as you.”

“Well, I’m going in to tell her myself,” said Anne resolutely.

Diana stared.

“Anne Shirley, you’d never! why--she’ll eat you alive!”

“Don’t frighten me any more than I am frightened,” implored Anne. “I’d
rather walk up to a cannon’s mouth. But I’ve got to do it, Diana. It
was my fault and I’ve got to confess. I’ve had practice in confessing,
fortunately.”

“Well, she’s in the room,” said Diana. “You can go in if you want to. I
wouldn’t dare. And I don’t believe you’ll do a bit of good.”

With this encouragement Anne bearded the lion in its den--that is to
say, walked resolutely up to the sitting-room door and knocked faintly.
A sharp “Come in” followed.

Miss Josephine Barry, thin, prim, and rigid, was knitting fiercely by
the fire, her wrath quite unappeased and her eyes snapping through her
gold-rimmed glasses. She wheeled around in her chair, expecting to see
Diana, and beheld a white-faced girl whose great eyes were brimmed up
with a mixture of desperate courage and shrinking terror.

“Who are you?” demanded Miss Josephine Barry, without ceremony.

“I’m Anne of Green Gables,” said the small visitor tremulously, clasping
her hands with her characteristic gesture, “and I’ve come to confess, if
you please.”

“Confess what?”

“That it was all my fault about jumping into bed on you last night. I
suggested it. Diana would never have thought of such a thing, I am sure.
Diana is a very ladylike girl, Miss Barry. So you must see how unjust it
is to blame her.”

“Oh, I must, hey? I rather think Diana did her share of the jumping at
least. Such carryings on in a respectable house!”

“But we were only in fun,” persisted Anne. “I think you ought to forgive
us, Miss Barry, now that we’ve apologized. And anyhow, please forgive
Diana and let her have her music lessons. Diana’s heart is set on her
music lessons, Miss Barry, and I know too well what it is to set your
heart on a thing and not get it. If you must be cross with anyone, be
cross with me. I’ve been so used in my early days to having people cross
at me that I can endure it much better than Diana can.”

Much of the snap had gone out of the old lady’s eyes by this time
and was replaced by a twinkle of amused interest. But she still said
severely:

“I don’t think it is any excuse for you that you were only in fun.
Little girls never indulged in that kind of fun when I was young. You
don’t know what it is to be awakened out of a sound sleep, after a long
and arduous journey, by two great girls coming bounce down on you.”

“I don’t _know_, but I can _imagine_,” said Anne eagerly. “I’m sure it must
have been very disturbing. But then, there is our side of it too. Have
you any imagination, Miss Barry? If you have, just put yourself in
our place. We didn’t know there was anybody in that bed and you nearly
scared us to death. It was simply awful the way we felt. And then we
couldn’t sleep in the spare room after being promised. I suppose you are
used to sleeping in spare rooms. But just imagine what you would feel
like if you were a little orphan girl who had never had such an honor.”

All the snap had gone by this time. Miss Barry actually laughed--a
sound which caused Diana, waiting in speechless anxiety in the kitchen
outside, to give a great gasp of relief.

“I’m afraid my imagination is a little rusty--it’s so long since I used
it,” she said. “I dare say your claim to sympathy is just as strong as
mine. It all depends on the way we look at it. Sit down here and tell me
about yourself.”

“I am very sorry I can’t,” said Anne firmly. “I would like to, because
you seem like an interesting lady, and you might even be a kindred
spirit although you don’t look very much like it. But it is my duty to
go home to Miss Marilla Cuthbert. Miss Marilla Cuthbert is a very kind
lady who has taken me to bring up properly. She is doing her best, but
it is very discouraging work. You must not blame her because I jumped on
the bed. But before I go I do wish you would tell me if you will forgive
Diana and stay just as long as you meant to in Avonlea.”

“I think perhaps I will if you will come over and talk to me
occasionally,” said Miss Barry.

That evening Miss Barry gave Diana a silver bangle bracelet and told the
senior members of the household that she had unpacked her valise.

“I’ve made up my mind to stay simply for the sake of getting better
acquainted with that Anne-girl,” she said frankly. “She amuses me, and
at my time of life an amusing person is a rarity.”

Marilla’s only comment when she heard the story was, “I told you so.”
 This was for Matthew’s benefit.

Miss Barry stayed her month out and over. She was a more agreeable guest
than usual, for Anne kept her in good humor. They became firm friends.

When Miss Barry went away she said:

“Remember, you Anne-girl, when you come to town you’re to visit me and
I’ll put you in my very sparest spare-room bed to sleep.”

“Miss Barry was a kindred spirit, after all,” Anne confided to Marilla.
“You wouldn’t think so to look at her, but she is. You don’t find it
right out at first, as in Matthew’s case, but after a while you come
to see it. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s
splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”


CHAPTER XX. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong


|SPRING had come once more to Green Gables--the beautiful capricious,
reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a
succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles
of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover’s Lane were red budded
and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad’s Bubble. Away up in
the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane’s place, the Mayflowers blossomed
out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the
school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming
home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of
flowery spoil.

“I’m so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no
Mayflowers,” said Anne. “Diana says perhaps they have something better,
but there couldn’t be anything better than Mayflowers, could there,
Marilla? And Diana says if they don’t know what they are like they don’t
miss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think it
would be _tragic_, Marilla, not to know what Mayflowers are like and _not_
to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think
they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and this
is their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had our
lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well--such a _romantic_ spot.
Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty did because
he wouldn’t take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very _fashionable_
to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to Prissy Andrews
and I heard him to say ‘sweets to the sweet.’ He got that out of a
book, I know; but it shows he has some imagination. I was offered some
Mayflowers too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can’t tell you the
person’s name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips. We
made wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats; and when the
time came to go home we marched in procession down the road, two by two,
with our bouquets and wreaths, singing ‘My Home on the Hill.’ Oh, it was
so thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloane’s folks rushed out to see us
and everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made a
real sensation.”

“Not much wonder! Such silly doings!” was Marilla’s response.

After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpled
with them. Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverent
steps and worshiping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground.

“Somehow,” she told Diana, “when I’m going through here I don’t really
care whether Gil--whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not. But
when I’m up in school it’s all different and I care as much as ever.
There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is
why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would
be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so
interesting.”

One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again, when the
frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the
Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover
fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window.
She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the
book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the
boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom.

In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. The
walls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly
and yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was
altered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to
pervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and dresses
and ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms
on the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its
vivid occupant had taken a visible although unmaterial form and had
tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and
moonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne’s freshly
ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down with
a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, and
although the pain had gone she felt weak and “tuckered out,” as she
expressed it. Anne looked at her with eyes limpid with sympathy.

“I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Marilla. I
would have endured it joyfully for your sake.”

“I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting me
rest,” said Marilla. “You seem to have got on fairly well and made fewer
mistakes than usual. Of course it wasn’t exactly necessary to starch
Matthew’s handkerchiefs! And most people when they put a pie in the oven
to warm up for dinner take it out and eat it when it gets hot instead of
leaving it to be burned to a crisp. But that doesn’t seem to be your way
evidently.”

Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne penitently. “I never thought about that
pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt
_instinctively_ that there was something missing on the dinner table. I
was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not to
imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well until
I put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me to
imagine I was an enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with a
handsome knight riding to my rescue on a coal-black steed. So that
is how I came to forget the pie. I didn’t know I starched the
handkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing I was trying to think of a
name for a new island Diana and I have discovered up the brook. It’s the
most ravishing spot, Marilla. There are two maple trees on it and the
brook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it would be
splendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the Queen’s
birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I’m sorry about that pie
and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good today because it’s an
anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last year, Marilla?”

“No, I can’t think of anything special.”

“Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never
forget it. It was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn’t
seem so important to you. I’ve been here for a year and I’ve been so
happy. Of course, I’ve had my troubles, but one can live down troubles.
Are you sorry you kept me, Marilla?”

“No, I can’t say I’m sorry,” said Marilla, who sometimes wondered how
she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables, “no, not exactly
sorry. If you’ve finished your lessons, Anne, I want you to run over and
ask Mrs. Barry if she’ll lend me Diana’s apron pattern.”

“Oh--it’s--it’s too dark,” cried Anne.

“Too dark? Why, it’s only twilight. And goodness knows you’ve gone over
often enough after dark.”

“I’ll go over early in the morning,” said Anne eagerly. “I’ll get up at
sunrise and go over, Marilla.”

“What has got into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern to
cut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart too.”

“I’ll have to go around by the road, then,” said Anne, taking up her hat
reluctantly.

“Go by the road and waste half an hour! I’d like to catch you!”

“I can’t go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla,” cried Anne desperately.

Marilla stared.

“The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted
Wood?”

“The spruce wood over the brook,” said Anne in a whisper.

“Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who
has been telling you such stuff?”

“Nobody,” confessed Anne. “Diana and I just imagined the wood was
haunted. All the places around here are so--so--_commonplace_. We just got
this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is
so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it’s so
gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There’s a white
lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wrings
her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a
death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the
corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers
on your hand--so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And
there’s a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glower
at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn’t go through the
Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I’d be sure that white things
would reach out from behind the trees and grab me.”

“Did ever anyone hear the like!” ejaculated Marilla, who had
listened in dumb amazement. “Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you
believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?”

“Not believe _exactly_,” faltered Anne. “At least, I don’t believe it in
daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it’s different. That is when ghosts
walk.”

“There are no such things as ghosts, Anne.”

“Oh, but there are, Marilla,” cried Anne eagerly. “I know people who
have seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie Sloane says
that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one night
after he’d been buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloane’s grandmother
wouldn’t tell a story for anything. She’s a very religious woman. And
Mrs. Thomas’s father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire with
its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was the
spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die within nine
days. He didn’t, but he died two years after, so you see it was really
true. And Ruby Gillis says--”

“Anne Shirley,” interrupted Marilla firmly, “I never want to hear you
talking in this fashion again. I’ve had my doubts about that imagination
of yours right along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it, I
won’t countenance any such doings. You’ll go right over to Barry’s, and
you’ll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson and a warning to
you. And never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woods
again.”

Anne might plead and cry as she liked--and did, for her terror was very
real. Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce
grove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was inexorable. She
marched the shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered her
to proceed straightaway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of
wailing ladies and headless specters beyond.

“Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?” sobbed Anne. “What would you
feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?”

“I’ll risk it,” said Marilla unfeelingly. “You know I always mean what I
say. I’ll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March, now.”

Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering
up the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot that walk. Bitterly
did she repent the license she had given to her imagination. The goblins
of her fancy lurked in every shadow about her, reaching out their cold,
fleshless hands to grasp the terrified small girl who had called them
into being. A white strip of birch bark blowing up from the hollow over
the brown floor of the grove made her heart stand still. The long-drawn
wail of two old boughs rubbing against each other brought out the
perspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats in the darkness
over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When she reached Mr.
William Bell’s field she fled across it as if pursued by an army of
white things, and arrived at the Barry kitchen door so out of breath
that she could hardly gasp out her request for the apron pattern.
Diana was away so that she had no excuse to linger. The dreadful
return journey had to be faced. Anne went back over it with shut eyes,
preferring to take the risk of dashing her brains out among the boughs
to that of seeing a white thing. When she finally stumbled over the log
bridge she drew one long shivering breath of relief.

“Well, so nothing caught you?” said Marilla unsympathetically.

“Oh, Mar--Marilla,” chattered Anne, “I’ll b-b-be contt-tented with
c-c-commonplace places after this.”


CHAPTER XXI. A New Departure in Flavorings


|DEAR ME, there is nothing but meetings and partings in this world, as
Mrs. Lynde says,” remarked Anne plaintively, putting her slate and books
down on the kitchen table on the last day of June and wiping her red
eyes with a very damp handkerchief. “Wasn’t it fortunate, Marilla, that
I took an extra handkerchief to school today? I had a presentiment that
it would be needed.”

“I never thought you were so fond of Mr. Phillips that you’d require two
handkerchiefs to dry your tears just because he was going away,” said
Marilla.

“I don’t think I was crying because I was really so very fond of him,”
 reflected Anne. “I just cried because all the others did. It was
Ruby Gillis started it. Ruby Gillis has always declared she hated Mr.
Phillips, but just as soon as he got up to make his farewell speech she
burst into tears. Then all the girls began to cry, one after the other.
I tried to hold out, Marilla. I tried to remember the time Mr. Phillips
made me sit with Gil--with a boy; and the time he spelled my name
without an ‘e’ on the blackboard; and how he said I was the worst dunce
he ever saw at geometry and laughed at my spelling; and all the times he
had been so horrid and sarcastic; but somehow I couldn’t, Marilla, and I
just had to cry too. Jane Andrews has been talking for a month about how
glad she’d be when Mr. Phillips went away and she declared she’d never
shed a tear. Well, she was worse than any of us and had to borrow a
handkerchief from her brother--of course the boys didn’t cry--because
she hadn’t brought one of her own, not expecting to need it. Oh,
Marilla, it was heartrending. Mr. Phillips made such a beautiful
farewell speech beginning, ‘The time has come for us to part.’ It was
very affecting. And he had tears in his eyes too, Marilla. Oh, I felt
dreadfully sorry and remorseful for all the times I’d talked in school
and drawn pictures of him on my slate and made fun of him and Prissy.
I can tell you I wished I’d been a model pupil like Minnie Andrews. She
hadn’t anything on her conscience. The girls cried all the way home from
school. Carrie Sloane kept saying every few minutes, ‘The time has come
for us to part,’ and that would start us off again whenever we were in
any danger of cheering up. I do feel dreadfully sad, Marilla. But one
can’t feel quite in the depths of despair with two months’ vacation
before them, can they, Marilla? And besides, we met the new minister and
his wife coming from the station. For all I was feeling so bad about Mr.
Phillips going away I couldn’t help taking a little interest in a new
minister, could I? His wife is very pretty. Not exactly regally lovely,
of course--it wouldn’t do, I suppose, for a minister to have a regally
lovely wife, because it might set a bad example. Mrs. Lynde says the
minister’s wife over at Newbridge sets a very bad example because she
dresses so fashionably. Our new minister’s wife was dressed in blue
muslin with lovely puffed sleeves and a hat trimmed with roses.
Jane Andrews said she thought puffed sleeves were too worldly for
a minister’s wife, but I didn’t make any such uncharitable remark,
Marilla, because I know what it is to long for puffed sleeves. Besides,
she’s only been a minister’s wife for a little while, so one should
make allowances, shouldn’t they? They are going to board with Mrs. Lynde
until the manse is ready.”

If Marilla, in going down to Mrs. Lynde’s that evening, was actuated by
any motive save her avowed one of returning the quilting frames she had
borrowed the preceding winter, it was an amiable weakness shared by most
of the Avonlea people. Many a thing Mrs. Lynde had lent, sometimes
never expecting to see it again, came home that night in charge of the
borrowers thereof. A new minister, and moreover a minister with a wife,
was a lawful object of curiosity in a quiet little country settlement
where sensations were few and far between.

Old Mr. Bentley, the minister whom Anne had found lacking in
imagination, had been pastor of Avonlea for eighteen years. He was a
widower when he came, and a widower he remained, despite the fact that
gossip regularly married him to this, that, or the other one, every year
of his sojourn. In the preceding February he had resigned his charge and
departed amid the regrets of his people, most of whom had the affection
born of long intercourse for their good old minister in spite of his
shortcomings as an orator. Since then the Avonlea church had enjoyed a
variety of religious dissipation in listening to the many and various
candidates and “supplies” who came Sunday after Sunday to preach on
trial. These stood or fell by the judgment of the fathers and mothers
in Israel; but a certain small, red-haired girl who sat meekly in the
corner of the old Cuthbert pew also had her opinions about them and
discussed the same in full with Matthew, Marilla always declining from
principle to criticize ministers in any shape or form.

“I don’t think Mr. Smith would have done, Matthew” was Anne’s final
summing up. “Mrs. Lynde says his delivery was so poor, but I think his
worst fault was just like Mr. Bentley’s--he had no imagination. And Mr.
Terry had too much; he let it run away with him just as I did mine in
the matter of the Haunted Wood. Besides, Mrs. Lynde says his theology
wasn’t sound. Mr. Gresham was a very good man and a very religious man,
but he told too many funny stories and made the people laugh in church;
he was undignified, and you must have some dignity about a minister,
mustn’t you, Matthew? I thought Mr. Marshall was decidedly attractive;
but Mrs. Lynde says he isn’t married, or even engaged, because she made
special inquiries about him, and she says it would never do to have
a young unmarried minister in Avonlea, because he might marry in the
congregation and that would make trouble. Mrs. Lynde is a very farseeing
woman, isn’t she, Matthew? I’m very glad they’ve called Mr. Allan. I
liked him because his sermon was interesting and he prayed as if he
meant it and not just as if he did it because he was in the habit of it.
Mrs. Lynde says he isn’t perfect, but she says she supposes we couldn’t
expect a perfect minister for seven hundred and fifty dollars a year,
and anyhow his theology is sound because she questioned him thoroughly
on all the points of doctrine. And she knows his wife’s people and they
are most respectable and the women are all good housekeepers. Mrs. Lynde
says that sound doctrine in the man and good housekeeping in the woman
make an ideal combination for a minister’s family.”

The new minister and his wife were a young, pleasant-faced couple, still
on their honeymoon, and full of all good and beautiful enthusiasms for
their chosen lifework. Avonlea opened its heart to them from the start.
Old and young liked the frank, cheerful young man with his high ideals,
and the bright, gentle little lady who assumed the mistress-ship of the
manse. With Mrs. Allan Anne fell promptly and wholeheartedly in love.
She had discovered another kindred spirit.

“Mrs. Allan is perfectly lovely,” she announced one Sunday afternoon.
“She’s taken our class and she’s a splendid teacher. She said right away
she didn’t think it was fair for the teacher to ask all the questions,
and you know, Marilla, that is exactly what I’ve always thought. She
said we could ask her any question we liked and I asked ever so many.
I’m good at asking questions, Marilla.”

“I believe you” was Marilla’s emphatic comment.

“Nobody else asked any except Ruby Gillis, and she asked if there was
to be a Sunday-school picnic this summer. I didn’t think that was a
very proper question to ask because it hadn’t any connection with the
lesson--the lesson was about Daniel in the lions’ den--but Mrs. Allan
just smiled and said she thought there would be. Mrs. Allan has a
lovely smile; she has such _exquisite_ dimples in her cheeks. I wish I had
dimples in my cheeks, Marilla. I’m not half so skinny as I was when I
came here, but I have no dimples yet. If I had perhaps I could influence
people for good. Mrs. Allan said we ought always to try to influence
other people for good. She talked so nice about everything. I never knew
before that religion was such a cheerful thing. I always thought it
was kind of melancholy, but Mrs. Allan’s isn’t, and I’d like to be a
Christian if I could be one like her. I wouldn’t want to be one like Mr.
Superintendent Bell.”

“It’s very naughty of you to speak so about Mr. Bell,” said Marilla
severely. “Mr. Bell is a real good man.”

“Oh, of course he’s good,” agreed Anne, “but he doesn’t seem to get any
comfort out of it. If I could be good I’d dance and sing all day because
I was glad of it. I suppose Mrs. Allan is too old to dance and sing and
of course it wouldn’t be dignified in a minister’s wife. But I can just
feel she’s glad she’s a Christian and that she’d be one even if she
could get to heaven without it.”

“I suppose we must have Mr. and Mrs. Allan up to tea someday soon,” said
Marilla reflectively. “They’ve been most everywhere but here. Let me
see. Next Wednesday would be a good time to have them. But don’t say a
word to Matthew about it, for if he knew they were coming he’d find some
excuse to be away that day. He’d got so used to Mr. Bentley he didn’t
mind him, but he’s going to find it hard to get acquainted with a new
minister, and a new minister’s wife will frighten him to death.”

“I’ll be as secret as the dead,” assured Anne. “But oh, Marilla, will
you let me make a cake for the occasion? I’d love to do something for
Mrs. Allan, and you know I can make a pretty good cake by this time.”

“You can make a layer cake,” promised Marilla.

Monday and Tuesday great preparations went on at Green Gables.
Having the minister and his wife to tea was a serious and important
undertaking, and Marilla was determined not to be eclipsed by any of
the Avonlea housekeepers. Anne was wild with excitement and delight. She
talked it all over with Diana Tuesday night in the twilight, as they
sat on the big red stones by the Dryad’s Bubble and made rainbows in the
water with little twigs dipped in fir balsam.

“Everything is ready, Diana, except my cake which I’m to make in the
morning, and the baking-powder biscuits which Marilla will make just
before teatime. I assure you, Diana, that Marilla and I have had a busy
two days of it. It’s such a responsibility having a minister’s family to
tea. I never went through such an experience before. You should just see
our pantry. It’s a sight to behold. We’re going to have jellied chicken
and cold tongue. We’re to have two kinds of jelly, red and yellow, and
whipped cream and lemon pie, and cherry pie, and three kinds of cookies,
and fruit cake, and Marilla’s famous yellow plum preserves that she
keeps especially for ministers, and pound cake and layer cake, and
biscuits as aforesaid; and new bread and old both, in case the minister
is dyspeptic and can’t eat new. Mrs. Lynde says ministers are dyspeptic,
but I don’t think Mr. Allan has been a minister long enough for it to
have had a bad effect on him. I just grow cold when I think of my layer
cake. Oh, Diana, what if it shouldn’t be good! I dreamed last night that
I was chased all around by a fearful goblin with a big layer cake for a
head.”

“It’ll be good, all right,” assured Diana, who was a very comfortable
sort of friend. “I’m sure that piece of the one you made that we had for
lunch in Idlewild two weeks ago was perfectly elegant.”

“Yes; but cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just
when you especially want them to be good,” sighed Anne, setting a
particularly well-balsamed twig afloat. “However, I suppose I shall
just have to trust to Providence and be careful to put in the flour. Oh,
look, Diana, what a lovely rainbow! Do you suppose the dryad will come
out after we go away and take it for a scarf?”

“You know there is no such thing as a dryad,” said Diana. Diana’s mother
had found out about the Haunted Wood and had been decidedly angry over
it. As a result Diana had abstained from any further imitative flights
of imagination and did not think it prudent to cultivate a spirit of
belief even in harmless dryads.

“But it’s so easy to imagine there is,” said Anne. “Every night before
I go to bed, I look out of my window and wonder if the dryad is really
sitting here, combing her locks with the spring for a mirror. Sometimes
I look for her footprints in the dew in the morning. Oh, Diana, don’t
give up your faith in the dryad!”

Wednesday morning came. Anne got up at sunrise because she was too
excited to sleep. She had caught a severe cold in the head by reason of
her dabbling in the spring on the preceding evening; but nothing short
of absolute pneumonia could have quenched her interest in culinary
matters that morning. After breakfast she proceeded to make her cake.
When she finally shut the oven door upon it she drew a long breath.

“I’m sure I haven’t forgotten anything this time, Marilla. But do you
think it will rise? Just suppose perhaps the baking powder isn’t good? I
used it out of the new can. And Mrs. Lynde says you can never be sure of
getting good baking powder nowadays when everything is so adulterated.
Mrs. Lynde says the Government ought to take the matter up, but she says
we’ll never see the day when a Tory Government will do it. Marilla, what
if that cake doesn’t rise?”

“We’ll have plenty without it” was Marilla’s unimpassioned way of
looking at the subject.

The cake did rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and
feathery as golden foam. Anne, flushed with delight, clapped it together
with layers of ruby jelly and, in imagination, saw Mrs. Allan eating it
and possibly asking for another piece!

“You’ll be using the best tea set, of course, Marilla,” she said. “Can I
fix the table with ferns and wild roses?”

“I think that’s all nonsense,” sniffed Marilla. “In my opinion it’s the
eatables that matter and not flummery decorations.”

“Mrs. Barry had _her_ table decorated,” said Anne, who was not entirely
guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, “and the minister paid her an
elegant compliment. He said it was a feast for the eye as well as the
palate.”

“Well, do as you like,” said Marilla, who was quite determined not to
be surpassed by Mrs. Barry or anybody else. “Only mind you leave enough
room for the dishes and the food.”

Anne laid herself out to decorate in a manner and after a fashion that
should leave Mrs. Barry’s nowhere. Having abundance of roses and ferns
and a very artistic taste of her own, she made that tea table such a
thing of beauty that when the minister and his wife sat down to it they
exclaimed in chorus over it loveliness.

“It’s Anne’s doings,” said Marilla, grimly just; and Anne felt that Mrs.
Allan’s approving smile was almost too much happiness for this world.

Matthew was there, having been inveigled into the party only goodness
and Anne knew how. He had been in such a state of shyness and
nervousness that Marilla had given him up in despair, but Anne took him
in hand so successfully that he now sat at the table in his best clothes
and white collar and talked to the minister not uninterestingly.
He never said a word to Mrs. Allan, but that perhaps was not to be
expected.

All went merry as a marriage bell until Anne’s layer cake was passed.
Mrs. Allan, having already been helped to a bewildering variety,
declined it. But Marilla, seeing the disappointment on Anne’s face, said
smilingly:

“Oh, you must take a piece of this, Mrs. Allan. Anne made it on purpose
for you.”

“In that case I must sample it,” laughed Mrs. Allan, helping herself to
a plump triangle, as did also the minister and Marilla.

Mrs. Allan took a mouthful of hers and a most peculiar expression
crossed her face; not a word did she say, however, but steadily ate away
at it. Marilla saw the expression and hastened to taste the cake.

“Anne Shirley!” she exclaimed, “what on earth did you put into that
cake?”

“Nothing but what the recipe said, Marilla,” cried Anne with a look of
anguish. “Oh, isn’t it all right?”

“All right! It’s simply horrible. Mr. Allan, don’t try to eat it. Anne,
taste it yourself. What flavoring did you use?”

“Vanilla,” said Anne, her face scarlet with mortification after tasting
the cake. “Only vanilla. Oh, Marilla, it must have been the baking
powder. I had my suspicions of that bak--”

“Baking powder fiddlesticks! Go and bring me the bottle of vanilla you
used.”

Anne fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle partially
filled with a brown liquid and labeled yellowly, “Best Vanilla.”

Marilla took it, uncorked it, smelled it.

“Mercy on us, Anne, you’ve flavored that cake with _Anodyne Liniment_. I
broke the liniment bottle last week and poured what was left into an
old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it’s partly my fault--I should have
warned you--but for pity’s sake why couldn’t you have smelled it?”

Anne dissolved into tears under this double disgrace.

“I couldn’t--I had such a cold!” and with this she fairly fled to the
gable chamber, where she cast herself on the bed and wept as one who
refuses to be comforted.

Presently a light step sounded on the stairs and somebody entered the
room.

“Oh, Marilla,” sobbed Anne, without looking up, “I’m disgraced forever.
I shall never be able to live this down. It will get out--things always
do get out in Avonlea. Diana will ask me how my cake turned out and I
shall have to tell her the truth. I shall always be pointed at as the
girl who flavored a cake with anodyne liniment. Gil--the boys in school
will never get over laughing at it. Oh, Marilla, if you have a spark
of Christian pity don’t tell me that I must go down and wash the dishes
after this. I’ll wash them when the minister and his wife are gone, but
I cannot ever look Mrs. Allan in the face again. Perhaps she’ll think I
tried to poison her. Mrs. Lynde says she knows an orphan girl who tried
to poison her benefactor. But the liniment isn’t poisonous. It’s meant
to be taken internally--although not in cakes. Won’t you tell Mrs. Allan
so, Marilla?”

“Suppose you jump up and tell her so yourself,” said a merry voice.

Anne flew up, to find Mrs. Allan standing by her bed, surveying her with
laughing eyes.

“My dear little girl, you mustn’t cry like this,” she said, genuinely
disturbed by Anne’s tragic face. “Why, it’s all just a funny mistake
that anybody might make.”

“Oh, no, it takes me to make such a mistake,” said Anne forlornly. “And
I wanted to have that cake so nice for you, Mrs. Allan.”

“Yes, I know, dear. And I assure you I appreciate your kindness and
thoughtfulness just as much as if it had turned out all right. Now,
you mustn’t cry any more, but come down with me and show me your flower
garden. Miss Cuthbert tells me you have a little plot all your own. I
want to see it, for I’m very much interested in flowers.”

Anne permitted herself to be led down and comforted, reflecting that it
was really providential that Mrs. Allan was a kindred spirit. Nothing
more was said about the liniment cake, and when the guests went away
Anne found that she had enjoyed the evening more than could have been
expected, considering that terrible incident. Nevertheless, she sighed
deeply.

“Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no
mistakes in it yet?”

“I’ll warrant you’ll make plenty in it,” said Marilla. “I never saw your
beat for making mistakes, Anne.”

“Yes, and well I know it,” admitted Anne mournfully. “But have you ever
noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same
mistake twice.”

“I don’t know as that’s much benefit when you’re always making new
ones.”

“Oh, don’t you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one
person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through
with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

“Well, you’d better go and give that cake to the pigs,” said Marilla.
“It isn’t fit for any human to eat, not even Jerry Boute.”


CHAPTER XXII. Anne is Invited Out to Tea


|AND what are your eyes popping out of your head about. Now?” asked
Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the post office. “Have
you discovered another kindred spirit?” Excitement hung around Anne like
a garment, shone in her eyes, kindled in every feature. She had come
dancing up the lane, like a wind-blown sprite, through the mellow
sunshine and lazy shadows of the August evening.

“No, Marilla, but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at the
manse tomorrow afternoon! Mrs. Allan left the letter for me at the post
office. Just look at it, Marilla. ‘Miss Anne Shirley, Green Gables.’
That is the first time I was ever called ‘Miss.’ Such a thrill as it
gave me! I shall cherish it forever among my choicest treasures.”

“Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all the members of her
Sunday-school class to tea in turn,” said Marilla, regarding the
wonderful event very coolly. “You needn’t get in such a fever over it.
Do learn to take things calmly, child.”

For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All
“spirit and fire and dew,” as she was, the pleasures and pains of life
came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely
troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would
probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently
understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more
than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill
Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien
to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She did not
make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The downfall
of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into “deeps of affliction.” The
fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Marilla had
almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into
her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment. Neither
would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as she
was.

Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery because Matthew had
said the wind was round northeast and he feared it would be a rainy day
tomorrow. The rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her,
it sounded so like pattering raindrops, and the full, faraway roar of
the gulf, to which she listened delightedly at other times, loving its
strange, sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm
and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine day. Anne
thought that the morning would never come.

But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you are
invited to take tea at the manse. The morning, in spite of Matthew’s
predictions, was fine and Anne’s spirits soared to their highest.
“Oh, Marilla, there is something in me today that makes me just love
everybody I see,” she exclaimed as she washed the breakfast dishes.
“You don’t know how good I feel! Wouldn’t it be nice if it could last? I
believe I could be a model child if I were just invited out to tea every
day. But oh, Marilla, it’s a solemn occasion too. I feel so anxious.
What if I shouldn’t behave properly? You know I never had tea at a
manse before, and I’m not sure that I know all the rules of etiquette,
although I’ve been studying the rules given in the Etiquette Department
of the Family Herald ever since I came here. I’m so afraid I’ll do
something silly or forget to do something I should do. Would it be
good manners to take a second helping of anything if you wanted to _very_
much?”

“The trouble with you, Anne, is that you’re thinking too much about
yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest
and most agreeable to her,” said Marilla, hitting for once in her life
on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this.

“You are right, Marilla. I’ll try not to think about myself at all.”

Anne evidently got through her visit without any serious breach of
“etiquette,” for she came home through the twilight, under a great,
high-sprung sky gloried over with trails of saffron and rosy cloud, in
a beatified state of mind and told Marilla all about it happily, sitting
on the big red-sandstone slab at the kitchen door with her tired curly
head in Marilla’s gingham lap.

A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from the rims
of firry western hills and whistling through the poplars. One clear star
hung over the orchard and the fireflies were flitting over in Lover’s
Lane, in and out among the ferns and rustling boughs. Anne watched them
as she talked and somehow felt that wind and stars and fireflies were
all tangled up together into something unutterably sweet and enchanting.

“Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a most _fascinating_ time. I feel that I have not
lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if I should never
be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Allan met me
at the door. She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy,
with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a
seraph. I really think I’d like to be a minister’s wife when I grow up,
Marilla. A minister mightn’t mind my red hair because he wouldn’t be
thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one would have to
be naturally good and I’ll never be that, so I suppose there’s no use in
thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and others
are not. I’m one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I’m full of original
sin. No matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a success
of it as those who are naturally good. It’s a good deal like geometry,
I expect. But don’t you think the trying so hard ought to count for
something? Mrs. Allan is one of the naturally good people. I love her
passionately. You know there are some people, like Matthew and Mrs.
Allan that you can love right off without any trouble. And there are
others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to try very hard to love. You
know you _ought_ to love them because they know so much and are such
active workers in the church, but you have to keep reminding yourself of
it all the time or else you forget. There was another little girl at the
manse to tea, from the White Sands Sunday school. Her name was Laurette
Bradley, and she was a very nice little girl. Not exactly a kindred
spirit, you know, but still very nice. We had an elegant tea, and I
think I kept all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea Mrs.
Allan played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing too.
Mrs. Allan says I have a good voice and she says I must sing in the
Sunday-school choir after this. You can’t think how I was thrilled at
the mere thought. I’ve longed so to sing in the Sunday-school choir,
as Diana does, but I feared it was an honor I could never aspire to.
Lauretta had to go home early because there is a big concert in the
White Sands Hotel tonight and her sister is to recite at it. Lauretta
says that the Americans at the hotel give a concert every fortnight in
aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and they ask lots of the White
Sands people to recite. Lauretta said she expected to be asked herself
someday. I just gazed at her in awe. After she had gone Mrs. Allan and I
had a heart-to-heart talk. I told her everything--about Mrs. Thomas and
the twins and Katie Maurice and Violetta and coming to Green Gables and
my troubles over geometry. And would you believe it, Marilla? Mrs.
Allan told me she was a dunce at geometry too. You don’t know how that
encouraged me. Mrs. Lynde came to the manse just before I left, and what
do you think, Marilla? The trustees have hired a new teacher and it’s
a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. Isn’t that a romantic name? Mrs.
Lynde says they’ve never had a female teacher in Avonlea before and she
thinks it is a dangerous innovation. But I think it will be splendid
to have a lady teacher, and I really don’t see how I’m going to live
through the two weeks before school begins. I’m so impatient to see
her.”


CHAPTER XXIII. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor


|ANNE had to live through more than two weeks, as it happened. Almost a
month having elapsed since the liniment cake episode, it was high time
for her to get into fresh trouble of some sort, little mistakes, such as
absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim milk into a basket of yarn balls
in the pantry instead of into the pigs’ bucket, and walking clean over
the edge of the log bridge into the brook while wrapped in imaginative
reverie, not really being worth counting.

A week after the tea at the manse Diana Barry gave a party.

“Small and select,” Anne assured Marilla. “Just the girls in our class.”

They had a very good time and nothing untoward happened until after tea,
when they found themselves in the Barry garden, a little tired of all
their games and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might
present itself. This presently took the form of “daring.”

Daring was the fashionable amusement among the Avonlea small fry just
then. It had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls, and all
the silly things that were done in Avonlea that summer because the doers
thereof were “dared” to do them would fill a book by themselves.

First of all Carrie Sloane dared Ruby Gillis to climb to a certain point
in the huge old willow tree before the front door; which Ruby Gillis,
albeit in mortal dread of the fat green caterpillars with which said
tree was infested and with the fear of her mother before her eyes if she
should tear her new muslin dress, nimbly did, to the discomfiture of the
aforesaid Carrie Sloane. Then Josie Pye dared Jane Andrews to hop on her
left leg around the garden without stopping once or putting her right
foot to the ground; which Jane Andrews gamely tried to do, but gave out
at the third corner and had to confess herself defeated.

Josie’s triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste permitted,
Anne Shirley dared her to walk along the top of the board fence which
bounded the garden to the east. Now, to “walk” board fences requires
more skill and steadiness of head and heel than one might suppose who
has never tried it. But Josie Pye, if deficient in some qualities
that make for popularity, had at least a natural and inborn gift, duly
cultivated, for walking board fences. Josie walked the Barry fence with
an airy unconcern which seemed to imply that a little thing like that
wasn’t worth a “dare.” Reluctant admiration greeted her exploit, for
most of the other girls could appreciate it, having suffered many things
themselves in their efforts to walk fences. Josie descended from her
perch, flushed with victory, and darted a defiant glance at Anne.

Anne tossed her red braids.

“I don’t think it’s such a very wonderful thing to walk a little, low,
board fence,” she said. “I knew a girl in Marysville who could walk the
ridgepole of a roof.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Josie flatly. “I don’t believe anybody could
walk a ridgepole. _You_ couldn’t, anyhow.”

“Couldn’t I?” cried Anne rashly.

“Then I dare you to do it,” said Josie defiantly. “I dare you to climb
up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Barry’s kitchen roof.”

Anne turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done. She
walked toward the house, where a ladder was leaning against the kitchen
roof. All the fifth-class girls said, “Oh!” partly in excitement, partly
in dismay.

“Don’t you do it, Anne,” entreated Diana. “You’ll fall off and be
killed. Never mind Josie Pye. It isn’t fair to dare anybody to do
anything so dangerous.”

“I must do it. My honor is at stake,” said Anne solemnly. “I shall walk
that ridgepole, Diana, or perish in the attempt. If I am killed you are
to have my pearl bead ring.”

Anne climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the ridgepole,
balanced herself uprightly on that precarious footing, and started to
walk along it, dizzily conscious that she was uncomfortably high up
in the world and that walking ridgepoles was not a thing in which your
imagination helped you out much. Nevertheless, she managed to take
several steps before the catastrophe came. Then she swayed, lost her
balance, stumbled, staggered, and fell, sliding down over the sun-baked
roof and crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia creeper
beneath--all before the dismayed circle below could give a simultaneous,
terrified shriek.

If Anne had tumbled off the roof on the side up which she had ascended
Diana would probably have fallen heir to the pearl bead ring then and
there. Fortunately she fell on the other side, where the roof extended
down over the porch so nearly to the ground that a fall therefrom was
a much less serious thing. Nevertheless, when Diana and the other
girls had rushed frantically around the house--except Ruby Gillis, who
remained as if rooted to the ground and went into hysterics--they found
Anne lying all white and limp among the wreck and ruin of the Virginia
creeper.

“Anne, are you killed?” shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees
beside her friend. “Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one word to me and
tell me if you’re killed.”

To the immense relief of all the girls, and especially of Josie Pye,
who, in spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible
visions of a future branded as the girl who was the cause of Anne
Shirley’s early and tragic death, Anne sat dizzily up and answered
uncertainly:

“No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious.”

“Where?” sobbed Carrie Sloane. “Oh, where, Anne?” Before Anne could
answer Mrs. Barry appeared on the scene. At sight of her Anne tried to
scramble to her feet, but sank back again with a sharp little cry of
pain.

“What’s the matter? Where have you hurt yourself?” demanded Mrs. Barry.

“My ankle,” gasped Anne. “Oh, Diana, please find your father and ask him
to take me home. I know I can never walk there. And I’m sure I couldn’t
hop so far on one foot when Jane couldn’t even hop around the garden.”

Marilla was out in the orchard picking a panful of summer apples when
she saw Mr. Barry coming over the log bridge and up the slope, with Mrs.
Barry beside him and a whole procession of little girls trailing after
him. In his arms he carried Anne, whose head lay limply against his
shoulder.

At that moment Marilla had a revelation. In the sudden stab of fear that
pierced her very heart she realized what Anne had come to mean to her.
She would have admitted that she liked Anne--nay, that she was very fond
of Anne. But now she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Anne
was dearer to her than anything else on earth.

“Mr. Barry, what has happened to her?” she gasped, more white and shaken
than the self-contained, sensible Marilla had been for many years.

Anne herself answered, lifting her head.

“Don’t be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridgepole and I
fell off. I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might have
broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things.”

“I might have known you’d go and do something of the sort when I let you
go to that party,” said Marilla, sharp and shrewish in her very relief.
“Bring her in here, Mr. Barry, and lay her on the sofa. Mercy me, the
child has gone and fainted!”

It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of her injury, Anne had one more
of her wishes granted to her. She had fainted dead away.

Matthew, hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway
dispatched for the doctor, who in due time came, to discover that the
injury was more serious than they had supposed. Anne’s ankle was broken.

That night, when Marilla went up to the east gable, where a white-faced
girl was lying, a plaintive voice greeted her from the bed.

“Aren’t you very sorry for me, Marilla?”

“It was your own fault,” said Marilla, twitching down the blind and
lighting a lamp.

“And that is just why you should be sorry for me,” said Anne, “because
the thought that it is all my own fault is what makes it so hard. If I
could blame it on anybody I would feel so much better. But what would
you have done, Marilla, if you had been dared to walk a ridgepole?”

“I’d have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away. Such
absurdity!” said Marilla.

Anne sighed.

“But you have such strength of mind, Marilla. I haven’t. I just felt
that I couldn’t bear Josie Pye’s scorn. She would have crowed over me
all my life. And I think I have been punished so much that you needn’t
be very cross with me, Marilla. It’s not a bit nice to faint, after all.
And the doctor hurt me dreadfully when he was setting my ankle. I won’t
be able to go around for six or seven weeks and I’ll miss the new lady
teacher. She won’t be new any more by the time I’m able to go to school.
And Gil--everybody will get ahead of me in class. Oh, I am an afflicted
mortal. But I’ll try to bear it all bravely if only you won’t be cross
with me, Marilla.”

“There, there, I’m not cross,” said Marilla. “You’re an unlucky child,
there’s no doubt about that; but as you say, you’ll have the suffering
of it. Here now, try and eat some supper.”

“Isn’t it fortunate I’ve got such an imagination?” said Anne. “It will
help me through splendidly, I expect. What do people who haven’t any
imagination do when they break their bones, do you suppose, Marilla?”

Anne had good reason to bless her imagination many a time and oft during
the tedious seven weeks that followed. But she was not solely dependent
on it. She had many visitors and not a day passed without one or more of
the schoolgirls dropping in to bring her flowers and books and tell her
all the happenings in the juvenile world of Avonlea.

“Everybody has been so good and kind, Marilla,” sighed Anne happily,
on the day when she could first limp across the floor. “It isn’t very
pleasant to be laid up; but there is a bright side to it, Marilla. You
find out how many friends you have. Why, even Superintendent Bell came
to see me, and he’s really a very fine man. Not a kindred spirit, of
course; but still I like him and I’m awfully sorry I ever criticized his
prayers. I believe now he really does mean them, only he has got into
the habit of saying them as if he didn’t. He could get over that if he’d
take a little trouble. I gave him a good broad hint. I told him how hard
I tried to make my own little private prayers interesting. He told me
all about the time he broke his ankle when he was a boy. It does seem
so strange to think of Superintendent Bell ever being a boy. Even my
imagination has its limits, for I can’t imagine _that_. When I try to
imagine him as a boy I see him with gray whiskers and spectacles, just
as he looks in Sunday school, only small. Now, it’s so easy to imagine
Mrs. Allan as a little girl. Mrs. Allan has been to see me fourteen
times. Isn’t that something to be proud of, Marilla? When a minister’s
wife has so many claims on her time! She is such a cheerful person to
have visit you, too. She never tells you it’s your own fault and she
hopes you’ll be a better girl on account of it. Mrs. Lynde always told
me that when she came to see me; and she said it in a kind of way that
made me feel she might hope I’d be a better girl but didn’t really
believe I would. Even Josie Pye came to see me. I received her as
politely as I could, because I think she was sorry she dared me to walk
a ridgepole. If I had been killed she would had to carry a dark burden
of remorse all her life. Diana has been a faithful friend. She’s been
over every day to cheer my lonely pillow. But oh, I shall be so glad
when I can go to school for I’ve heard such exciting things about the
new teacher. The girls all think she is perfectly sweet. Diana says she
has the loveliest fair curly hair and such fascinating eyes. She dresses
beautifully, and her sleeve puffs are bigger than anybody else’s in
Avonlea. Every other Friday afternoon she has recitations and everybody
has to say a piece or take part in a dialogue. Oh, it’s just glorious to
think of it. Josie Pye says she hates it but that is just because Josie
has so little imagination. Diana and Ruby Gillis and Jane Andrews are
preparing a dialogue, called ‘A Morning Visit,’ for next Friday. And the
Friday afternoons they don’t have recitations Miss Stacy takes them
all to the woods for a ‘field’ day and they study ferns and flowers
and birds. And they have physical culture exercises every morning and
evening. Mrs. Lynde says she never heard of such goings on and it all
comes of having a lady teacher. But I think it must be splendid and I
believe I shall find that Miss Stacy is a kindred spirit.”

“There’s one thing plain to be seen, Anne,” said Marilla, “and that is
that your fall off the Barry roof hasn’t injured your tongue at all.”


CHAPTER XXIV. Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert


|IT was October again when Anne was ready to go back to school--a
glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the
valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had
poured them in for the sun to drain--amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and
smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the fields glistened like cloth
of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in the hollows of
many-stemmed woods to run crisply through. The Birch Path was a canopy
of yellow and the ferns were sear and brown all along it. There was a
tang in the very air that inspired the hearts of small maidens tripping,
unlike snails, swiftly and willingly to school; and it _was_ jolly to
be back again at the little brown desk beside Diana, with Ruby Gillis
nodding across the aisle and Carrie Sloane sending up notes and Julia
Bell passing a “chew” of gum down from the back seat. Anne drew a long
breath of happiness as she sharpened her pencil and arranged her picture
cards in her desk. Life was certainly very interesting.

In the new teacher she found another true and helpful friend. Miss Stacy
was a bright, sympathetic young woman with the happy gift of winning and
holding the affections of her pupils and bringing out the best that was
in them mentally and morally. Anne expanded like a flower under this
wholesome influence and carried home to the admiring Matthew and the
critical Marilla glowing accounts of schoolwork and aims.

“I love Miss Stacy with my whole heart, Marilla. She is so ladylike
and she has such a sweet voice. When she pronounces my name I feel
_instinctively_ that she’s spelling it with an E. We had recitations
this afternoon. I just wish you could have been there to hear me recite
‘Mary, Queen of Scots.’ I just put my whole soul into it. Ruby Gillis
told me coming home that the way I said the line, ‘Now for my father’s
arm,’ she said, ‘my woman’s heart farewell,’ just made her blood run
cold.”

“Well now, you might recite it for me some of these days, out in the
barn,” suggested Matthew.

“Of course I will,” said Anne meditatively, “but I won’t be able to do
it so well, I know. It won’t be so exciting as it is when you have a
whole schoolful before you hanging breathlessly on your words. I know I
won’t be able to make your blood run cold.”

“Mrs. Lynde says it made _her_ blood run cold to see the boys climbing to
the very tops of those big trees on Bell’s hill after crows’ nests last
Friday,” said Marilla. “I wonder at Miss Stacy for encouraging it.”

“But we wanted a crow’s nest for nature study,” explained Anne. “That
was on our field afternoon. Field afternoons are splendid, Marilla.
And Miss Stacy explains everything so beautifully. We have to write
compositions on our field afternoons and I write the best ones.”

“It’s very vain of you to say so then. You’d better let your teacher say
it.”

“But she _did_ say it, Marilla. And indeed I’m not vain about it. How can
I be, when I’m such a dunce at geometry? Although I’m really beginning
to see through it a little, too. Miss Stacy makes it so clear. Still,
I’ll never be good at it and I assure you it is a humbling reflection.
But I love writing compositions. Mostly Miss Stacy lets us choose
our own subjects; but next week we are to write a composition on some
remarkable person. It’s hard to choose among so many remarkable people
who have lived. Mustn’t it be splendid to be remarkable and have
compositions written about you after you’re dead? Oh, I would dearly
love to be remarkable. I think when I grow up I’ll be a trained nurse
and go with the Red Crosses to the field of battle as a messenger of
mercy. That is, if I don’t go out as a foreign missionary. That would
be very romantic, but one would have to be very good to be a missionary,
and that would be a stumbling block. We have physical culture exercises
every day, too. They make you graceful and promote digestion.”

“Promote fiddlesticks!” said Marilla, who honestly thought it was all
nonsense.

But all the field afternoons and recitation Fridays and physical culture
contortions paled before a project which Miss Stacy brought forward in
November. This was that the scholars of Avonlea school should get up
a concert and hold it in the hall on Christmas Night, for the laudable
purpose of helping to pay for a schoolhouse flag. The pupils one and
all taking graciously to this plan, the preparations for a program
were begun at once. And of all the excited performers-elect none was so
excited as Anne Shirley, who threw herself into the undertaking heart
and soul, hampered as she was by Marilla’s disapproval. Marilla thought
it all rank foolishness.

“It’s just filling your heads up with nonsense and taking time that
ought to be put on your lessons,” she grumbled. “I don’t approve of
children’s getting up concerts and racing about to practices. It makes
them vain and forward and fond of gadding.”

“But think of the worthy object,” pleaded Anne. “A flag will cultivate a
spirit of patriotism, Marilla.”

“Fudge! There’s precious little patriotism in the thoughts of any of
you. All you want is a good time.”

“Well, when you can combine patriotism and fun, isn’t it all right? Of
course it’s real nice to be getting up a concert. We’re going to have
six choruses and Diana is to sing a solo. I’m in two dialogues--‘The
Society for the Suppression of Gossip’ and ‘The Fairy Queen.’ The boys
are going to have a dialogue too. And I’m to have two recitations,
Marilla. I just tremble when I think of it, but it’s a nice thrilly kind
of tremble. And we’re to have a tableau at the last--‘Faith, Hope and
Charity.’ Diana and Ruby and I are to be in it, all draped in white with
flowing hair. I’m to be Hope, with my hands clasped--so--and my eyes
uplifted. I’m going to practice my recitations in the garret. Don’t be
alarmed if you hear me groaning. I have to groan heartrendingly in one
of them, and it’s really hard to get up a good artistic groan, Marilla.
Josie Pye is sulky because she didn’t get the part she wanted in
the dialogue. She wanted to be the fairy queen. That would have been
ridiculous, for who ever heard of a fairy queen as fat as Josie? Fairy
queens must be slender. Jane Andrews is to be the queen and I am to be
one of her maids of honor. Josie says she thinks a red-haired fairy is
just as ridiculous as a fat one, but I do not let myself mind what Josie
says. I’m to have a wreath of white roses on my hair and Ruby Gillis
is going to lend me her slippers because I haven’t any of my own. It’s
necessary for fairies to have slippers, you know. You couldn’t imagine
a fairy wearing boots, could you? Especially with copper toes? We are
going to decorate the hall with creeping spruce and fir mottoes with
pink tissue-paper roses in them. And we are all to march in two by two
after the audience is seated, while Emma White plays a march on the
organ. Oh, Marilla, I know you are not so enthusiastic about it as I am,
but don’t you hope your little Anne will distinguish herself?”

“All I hope is that you’ll behave yourself. I’ll be heartily glad when
all this fuss is over and you’ll be able to settle down. You are simply
good for nothing just now with your head stuffed full of dialogues and
groans and tableaus. As for your tongue, it’s a marvel it’s not clean
worn out.”

Anne sighed and betook herself to the back yard, over which a young new
moon was shining through the leafless poplar boughs from an apple-green
western sky, and where Matthew was splitting wood. Anne perched herself
on a block and talked the concert over with him, sure of an appreciative
and sympathetic listener in this instance at least.

“Well now, I reckon it’s going to be a pretty good concert. And I
expect you’ll do your part fine,” he said, smiling down into her eager,
vivacious little face. Anne smiled back at him. Those two were the best
of friends and Matthew thanked his stars many a time and oft that he had
nothing to do with bringing her up. That was Marilla’s exclusive duty;
if it had been his he would have been worried over frequent conflicts
between inclination and said duty. As it was, he was free to, “spoil
Anne”--Marilla’s phrasing--as much as he liked. But it was not such a
bad arrangement after all; a little “appreciation” sometimes does quite
as much good as all the conscientious “bringing up” in the world.


CHAPTER XXV. Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves


|MATTHEW was having a bad ten minutes of it. He had come into the
kitchen, in the twilight of a cold, gray December evening, and had sat
down in the woodbox corner to take off his heavy boots, unconscious of
the fact that Anne and a bevy of her schoolmates were having a practice
of “The Fairy Queen” in the sitting room. Presently they came trooping
through the hall and out into the kitchen, laughing and chattering
gaily. They did not see Matthew, who shrank bashfully back into the
shadows beyond the woodbox with a boot in one hand and a bootjack in the
other, and he watched them shyly for the aforesaid ten minutes as they
put on caps and jackets and talked about the dialogue and the concert.
Anne stood among them, bright eyed and animated as they; but Matthew
suddenly became conscious that there was something about her different
from her mates. And what worried Matthew was that the difference
impressed him as being something that should not exist. Anne had a
brighter face, and bigger, starrier eyes, and more delicate features
than the other; even shy, unobservant Matthew had learned to take note
of these things; but the difference that disturbed him did not consist
in any of these respects. Then in what did it consist?

Matthew was haunted by this question long after the girls had gone, arm
in arm, down the long, hard-frozen lane and Anne had betaken herself
to her books. He could not refer it to Marilla, who, he felt, would be
quite sure to sniff scornfully and remark that the only difference she
saw between Anne and the other girls was that they sometimes kept their
tongues quiet while Anne never did. This, Matthew felt, would be no
great help.

He had recourse to his pipe that evening to help him study it out, much
to Marilla’s disgust. After two hours of smoking and hard reflection
Matthew arrived at a solution of his problem. Anne was not dressed like
the other girls!

The more Matthew thought about the matter the more he was convinced that
Anne never had been dressed like the other girls--never since she had
come to Green Gables. Marilla kept her clothed in plain, dark dresses,
all made after the same unvarying pattern. If Matthew knew there was
such a thing as fashion in dress it was as much as he did; but he was
quite sure that Anne’s sleeves did not look at all like the sleeves the
other girls wore. He recalled the cluster of little girls he had seen
around her that evening--all gay in waists of red and blue and pink
and white--and he wondered why Marilla always kept her so plainly and
soberly gowned.

Of course, it must be all right. Marilla knew best and Marilla was
bringing her up. Probably some wise, inscrutable motive was to be served
thereby. But surely it would do no harm to let the child have one pretty
dress--something like Diana Barry always wore. Matthew decided that
he would give her one; that surely could not be objected to as an
unwarranted putting in of his oar. Christmas was only a fortnight off.
A nice new dress would be the very thing for a present. Matthew, with a
sigh of satisfaction, put away his pipe and went to bed, while Marilla
opened all the doors and aired the house.

The very next evening Matthew betook himself to Carmody to buy the
dress, determined to get the worst over and have done with it. It would
be, he felt assured, no trifling ordeal. There were some things Matthew
could buy and prove himself no mean bargainer; but he knew he would be
at the mercy of shopkeepers when it came to buying a girl’s dress.

After much cogitation Matthew resolved to go to Samuel Lawson’s store
instead of William Blair’s. To be sure, the Cuthberts always had gone to
William Blair’s; it was almost as much a matter of conscience with them
as to attend the Presbyterian church and vote Conservative. But William
Blair’s two daughters frequently waited on customers there and Matthew
held them in absolute dread. He could contrive to deal with them when he
knew exactly what he wanted and could point it out; but in such a matter
as this, requiring explanation and consultation, Matthew felt that he
must be sure of a man behind the counter. So he would go to Lawson’s,
where Samuel or his son would wait on him.

Alas! Matthew did not know that Samuel, in the recent expansion of his
business, had set up a lady clerk also; she was a niece of his wife’s
and a very dashing young person indeed, with a huge, drooping pompadour,
big, rolling brown eyes, and a most extensive and bewildering smile. She
was dressed with exceeding smartness and wore several bangle bracelets
that glittered and rattled and tinkled with every movement of her hands.
Matthew was covered with confusion at finding her there at all; and
those bangles completely wrecked his wits at one fell swoop.

“What can I do for you this evening, Mr. Cuthbert?” Miss Lucilla Harris
inquired, briskly and ingratiatingly, tapping the counter with both
hands.

“Have you any--any--any--well now, say any garden rakes?” stammered
Matthew.

Miss Harris looked somewhat surprised, as well she might, to hear a man
inquiring for garden rakes in the middle of December.

“I believe we have one or two left over,” she said, “but they’re
upstairs in the lumber room. I’ll go and see.” During her absence
Matthew collected his scattered senses for another effort.

When Miss Harris returned with the rake and cheerfully inquired:
“Anything else tonight, Mr. Cuthbert?” Matthew took his courage in
both hands and replied: “Well now, since you suggest it, I might as
well--take--that is--look at--buy some--some hayseed.”

Miss Harris had heard Matthew Cuthbert called odd. She now concluded
that he was entirely crazy.

“We only keep hayseed in the spring,” she explained loftily. “We’ve none
on hand just now.”

“Oh, certainly--certainly--just as you say,” stammered unhappy
Matthew, seizing the rake and making for the door. At the threshold he
recollected that he had not paid for it and he turned miserably back.
While Miss Harris was counting out his change he rallied his powers for
a final desperate attempt.

“Well now--if it isn’t too much trouble--I might as well--that is--I’d
like to look at--at--some sugar.”

“White or brown?” queried Miss Harris patiently.

“Oh--well now--brown,” said Matthew feebly.

“There’s a barrel of it over there,” said Miss Harris, shaking her
bangles at it. “It’s the only kind we have.”

“I’ll--I’ll take twenty pounds of it,” said Matthew, with beads of
perspiration standing on his forehead.

Matthew had driven halfway home before he was his own man again. It had
been a gruesome experience, but it served him right, he thought, for
committing the heresy of going to a strange store. When he reached
home he hid the rake in the tool house, but the sugar he carried in to
Marilla.

“Brown sugar!” exclaimed Marilla. “Whatever possessed you to get so
much? You know I never use it except for the hired man’s porridge or
black fruit cake. Jerry’s gone and I’ve made my cake long ago. It’s not
good sugar, either--it’s coarse and dark--William Blair doesn’t usually
keep sugar like that.”

“I--I thought it might come in handy sometime,” said Matthew, making
good his escape.

When Matthew came to think the matter over he decided that a woman was
required to cope with the situation. Marilla was out of the question.
Matthew felt sure she would throw cold water on his project at once.
Remained only Mrs. Lynde; for of no other woman in Avonlea would Matthew
have dared to ask advice. To Mrs. Lynde he went accordingly, and that
good lady promptly took the matter out of the harassed man’s hands.

“Pick out a dress for you to give Anne? To be sure I will. I’m going to
Carmody tomorrow and I’ll attend to it. Have you something particular in
mind? No? Well, I’ll just go by my own judgment then. I believe a nice
rich brown would just suit Anne, and William Blair has some new gloria
in that’s real pretty. Perhaps you’d like me to make it up for her, too,
seeing that if Marilla was to make it Anne would probably get wind of it
before the time and spoil the surprise? Well, I’ll do it. No, it isn’t
a mite of trouble. I like sewing. I’ll make it to fit my niece, Jenny
Gillis, for she and Anne are as like as two peas as far as figure goes.”

“Well now, I’m much obliged,” said Matthew, “and--and--I dunno--but I’d
like--I think they make the sleeves different nowadays to what they used
to be. If it wouldn’t be asking too much I--I’d like them made in the
new way.”

“Puffs? Of course. You needn’t worry a speck more about it, Matthew.
I’ll make it up in the very latest fashion,” said Mrs. Lynde. To herself
she added when Matthew had gone:

“It’ll be a real satisfaction to see that poor child wearing something
decent for once. The way Marilla dresses her is positively ridiculous,
that’s what, and I’ve ached to tell her so plainly a dozen times. I’ve
held my tongue though, for I can see Marilla doesn’t want advice and she
thinks she knows more about bringing children up than I do for all
she’s an old maid. But that’s always the way. Folks that has brought up
children know that there’s no hard and fast method in the world that’ll
suit every child. But them as never have think it’s all as plain and
easy as Rule of Three--just set your three terms down so fashion, and
the sum ‘ll work out correct. But flesh and blood don’t come under the
head of arithmetic and that’s where Marilla Cuthbert makes her mistake.
I suppose she’s trying to cultivate a spirit of humility in Anne by
dressing her as she does; but it’s more likely to cultivate envy and
discontent. I’m sure the child must feel the difference between her
clothes and the other girls’. But to think of Matthew taking notice of
it! That man is waking up after being asleep for over sixty years.”

Marilla knew all the following fortnight that Matthew had something on
his mind, but what it was she could not guess, until Christmas Eve, when
Mrs. Lynde brought up the new dress. Marilla behaved pretty well on the
whole, although it is very likely she distrusted Mrs. Lynde’s diplomatic
explanation that she had made the dress because Matthew was afraid Anne
would find out about it too soon if Marilla made it.

“So this is what Matthew has been looking so mysterious over and
grinning about to himself for two weeks, is it?” she said a little
stiffly but tolerantly. “I knew he was up to some foolishness. Well, I
must say I don’t think Anne needed any more dresses. I made her three
good, warm, serviceable ones this fall, and anything more is sheer
extravagance. There’s enough material in those sleeves alone to make a
waist, I declare there is. You’ll just pamper Anne’s vanity, Matthew,
and she’s as vain as a peacock now. Well, I hope she’ll be satisfied
at last, for I know she’s been hankering after those silly sleeves ever
since they came in, although she never said a word after the first. The
puffs have been getting bigger and more ridiculous right along; they’re
as big as balloons now. Next year anybody who wears them will have to go
through a door sideways.”

Christmas morning broke on a beautiful white world. It had been a very
mild December and people had looked forward to a green Christmas; but
just enough snow fell softly in the night to transfigure Avonlea. Anne
peeped out from her frosted gable window with delighted eyes. The firs
in the Haunted Wood were all feathery and wonderful; the birches
and wild cherry trees were outlined in pearl; the plowed fields were
stretches of snowy dimples; and there was a crisp tang in the air that
was glorious. Anne ran downstairs singing until her voice reechoed
through Green Gables.

“Merry Christmas, Marilla! Merry Christmas, Matthew! Isn’t it a lovely
Christmas? I’m so glad it’s white. Any other kind of Christmas doesn’t
seem real, does it? I don’t like green Christmases. They’re not
green--they’re just nasty faded browns and grays. What makes people call
them green? Why--why--Matthew, is that for me? Oh, Matthew!”

Matthew had sheepishly unfolded the dress from its paper swathings and
held it out with a deprecatory glance at Marilla, who feigned to be
contemptuously filling the teapot, but nevertheless watched the scene
out of the corner of her eye with a rather interested air.

Anne took the dress and looked at it in reverent silence. Oh, how pretty
it was--a lovely soft brown gloria with all the gloss of silk; a skirt
with dainty frills and shirrings; a waist elaborately pintucked in the
most fashionable way, with a little ruffle of filmy lace at the neck.
But the sleeves--they were the crowning glory! Long elbow cuffs, and
above them two beautiful puffs divided by rows of shirring and bows of
brown-silk ribbon.

“That’s a Christmas present for you, Anne,” said Matthew shyly.
“Why--why--Anne, don’t you like it? Well now--well now.”

For Anne’s eyes had suddenly filled with tears.

“Like it! Oh, Matthew!” Anne laid the dress over a chair and clasped
her hands. “Matthew, it’s perfectly exquisite. Oh, I can never thank you
enough. Look at those sleeves! Oh, it seems to me this must be a happy
dream.”

“Well, well, let us have breakfast,” interrupted Marilla. “I must say,
Anne, I don’t think you needed the dress; but since Matthew has got it
for you, see that you take good care of it. There’s a hair ribbon Mrs.
Lynde left for you. It’s brown, to match the dress. Come now, sit in.”

“I don’t see how I’m going to eat breakfast,” said Anne rapturously.
“Breakfast seems so commonplace at such an exciting moment. I’d rather
feast my eyes on that dress. I’m so glad that puffed sleeves are still
fashionable. It did seem to me that I’d never get over it if they went
out before I had a dress with them. I’d never have felt quite satisfied,
you see. It was lovely of Mrs. Lynde to give me the ribbon too. I feel
that I ought to be a very good girl indeed. It’s at times like this I’m
sorry I’m not a model little girl; and I always resolve that I will
be in future. But somehow it’s hard to carry out your resolutions when
irresistible temptations come. Still, I really will make an extra effort
after this.”

When the commonplace breakfast was over Diana appeared, crossing the
white log bridge in the hollow, a gay little figure in her crimson
ulster. Anne flew down the slope to meet her.

“Merry Christmas, Diana! And oh, it’s a wonderful Christmas. I’ve
something splendid to show you. Matthew has given me the loveliest
dress, with _such_ sleeves. I couldn’t even imagine any nicer.”

“I’ve got something more for you,” said Diana breathlessly. “Here--this
box. Aunt Josephine sent us out a big box with ever so many things in
it--and this is for you. I’d have brought it over last night, but it
didn’t come until after dark, and I never feel very comfortable coming
through the Haunted Wood in the dark now.”

Anne opened the box and peeped in. First a card with “For the Anne-girl
and Merry Christmas,” written on it; and then, a pair of the daintiest
little kid slippers, with beaded toes and satin bows and glistening
buckles.

“Oh,” said Anne, “Diana, this is too much. I must be dreaming.”

“I call it providential,” said Diana. “You won’t have to borrow Ruby’s
slippers now, and that’s a blessing, for they’re two sizes too big for
you, and it would be awful to hear a fairy shuffling. Josie Pye would
be delighted. Mind you, Rob Wright went home with Gertie Pye from the
practice night before last. Did you ever hear anything equal to that?”

All the Avonlea scholars were in a fever of excitement that day, for the
hall had to be decorated and a last grand rehearsal held.

The concert came off in the evening and was a pronounced success. The
little hall was crowded; all the performers did excellently well, but
Anne was the bright particular star of the occasion, as even envy, in
the shape of Josie Pye, dared not deny.

“Oh, hasn’t it been a brilliant evening?” sighed Anne, when it was all
over and she and Diana were walking home together under a dark, starry
sky.

“Everything went off very well,” said Diana practically. “I guess we
must have made as much as ten dollars. Mind you, Mr. Allan is going to
send an account of it to the Charlottetown papers.”

“Oh, Diana, will we really see our names in print? It makes me thrill to
think of it. Your solo was perfectly elegant, Diana. I felt prouder than
you did when it was encored. I just said to myself, ‘It is my dear bosom
friend who is so honored.’”

“Well, your recitations just brought down the house, Anne. That sad one
was simply splendid.”

“Oh, I was so nervous, Diana. When Mr. Allan called out my name I really
cannot tell how I ever got up on that platform. I felt as if a million
eyes were looking at me and through me, and for one dreadful moment I
was sure I couldn’t begin at all. Then I thought of my lovely puffed
sleeves and took courage. I knew that I must live up to those sleeves,
Diana. So I started in, and my voice seemed to be coming from ever so
far away. I just felt like a parrot. It’s providential that I practiced
those recitations so often up in the garret, or I’d never have been able
to get through. Did I groan all right?”

“Yes, indeed, you groaned lovely,” assured Diana.

“I saw old Mrs. Sloane wiping away tears when I sat down. It was
splendid to think I had touched somebody’s heart. It’s so romantic
to take part in a concert, isn’t it? Oh, it’s been a very memorable
occasion indeed.”

“Wasn’t the boys’ dialogue fine?” said Diana. “Gilbert Blythe was just
splendid. Anne, I do think it’s awful mean the way you treat Gil. Wait
till I tell you. When you ran off the platform after the fairy dialogue
one of your roses fell out of your hair. I saw Gil pick it up and put
it in his breast pocket. There now. You’re so romantic that I’m sure you
ought to be pleased at that.”

“It’s nothing to me what that person does,” said Anne loftily. “I simply
never waste a thought on him, Diana.”

That night Marilla and Matthew, who had been out to a concert for the
first time in twenty years, sat for a while by the kitchen fire after
Anne had gone to bed.

“Well now, I guess our Anne did as well as any of them,” said Matthew
proudly.

“Yes, she did,” admitted Marilla. “She’s a bright child, Matthew. And
she looked real nice too. I’ve been kind of opposed to this concert
scheme, but I suppose there’s no real harm in it after all. Anyhow, I
was proud of Anne tonight, although I’m not going to tell her so.”

“Well now, I was proud of her and I did tell her so ‘fore she went
upstairs,” said Matthew. “We must see what we can do for her some of
these days, Marilla. I guess she’ll need something more than Avonlea
school by and by.”

“There’s time enough to think of that,” said Marilla. “She’s only
thirteen in March. Though tonight it struck me she was growing quite a
big girl. Mrs. Lynde made that dress a mite too long, and it makes Anne
look so tall. She’s quick to learn and I guess the best thing we can do
for her will be to send her to Queen’s after a spell. But nothing need
be said about that for a year or two yet.”

“Well now, it’ll do no harm to be thinking it over off and on,” said
Matthew. “Things like that are all the better for lots of thinking
over.”


CHAPTER XXVI. The Story Club Is Formed


|JUNIOR Avonlea found it hard to settle down to humdrum existence
again. To Anne in particular things seemed fearfully flat, stale, and
unprofitable after the goblet of excitement she had been sipping for
weeks. Could she go back to the former quiet pleasures of those faraway
days before the concert? At first, as she told Diana, she did not really
think she could.

“I’m positively certain, Diana, that life can never be quite the
same again as it was in those olden days,” she said mournfully, as if
referring to a period of at least fifty years back. “Perhaps after a
while I’ll get used to it, but I’m afraid concerts spoil people for
everyday life. I suppose that is why Marilla disapproves of them.
Marilla is such a sensible woman. It must be a great deal better to be
sensible; but still, I don’t believe I’d really want to be a sensible
person, because they are so unromantic. Mrs. Lynde says there is no
danger of my ever being one, but you can never tell. I feel just now
that I may grow up to be sensible yet. But perhaps that is only because
I’m tired. I simply couldn’t sleep last night for ever so long. I just
lay awake and imagined the concert over and over again. That’s one
splendid thing about such affairs--it’s so lovely to look back to them.”

Eventually, however, Avonlea school slipped back into its old groove
and took up its old interests. To be sure, the concert left traces. Ruby
Gillis and Emma White, who had quarreled over a point of precedence in
their platform seats, no longer sat at the same desk, and a promising
friendship of three years was broken up. Josie Pye and Julia Bell did
not “speak” for three months, because Josie Pye had told Bessie Wright
that Julia Bell’s bow when she got up to recite made her think of a
chicken jerking its head, and Bessie told Julia. None of the Sloanes
would have any dealings with the Bells, because the Bells had declared
that the Sloanes had too much to do in the program, and the Sloanes had
retorted that the Bells were not capable of doing the little they had to
do properly. Finally, Charlie Sloane fought Moody Spurgeon MacPherson,
because Moody Spurgeon had said that Anne Shirley put on airs about
her recitations, and Moody Spurgeon was “licked”; consequently Moody
Spurgeon’s sister, Ella May, would not “speak” to Anne Shirley all the
rest of the winter. With the exception of these trifling frictions, work
in Miss Stacy’s little kingdom went on with regularity and smoothness.

The winter weeks slipped by. It was an unusually mild winter, with so
little snow that Anne and Diana could go to school nearly every day by
way of the Birch Path. On Anne’s birthday they were tripping lightly
down it, keeping eyes and ears alert amid all their chatter, for Miss
Stacy had told them that they must soon write a composition on “A
Winter’s Walk in the Woods,” and it behooved them to be observant.

“Just think, Diana, I’m thirteen years old today,” remarked Anne in an
awed voice. “I can scarcely realize that I’m in my teens. When I woke
this morning it seemed to me that everything must be different. You’ve
been thirteen for a month, so I suppose it doesn’t seem such a novelty
to you as it does to me. It makes life seem so much more interesting.
In two more years I’ll be really grown up. It’s a great comfort to think
that I’ll be able to use big words then without being laughed at.”

“Ruby Gillis says she means to have a beau as soon as she’s fifteen,”
 said Diana.

“Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but beaus,” said Anne disdainfully.
“She’s actually delighted when anyone writes her name up in a
take-notice for all she pretends to be so mad. But I’m afraid that is an
uncharitable speech. Mrs. Allan says we should never make uncharitable
speeches; but they do slip out so often before you think, don’t they? I
simply can’t talk about Josie Pye without making an uncharitable speech,
so I never mention her at all. You may have noticed that. I’m trying to
be as much like Mrs. Allan as I possibly can, for I think she’s perfect.
Mr. Allan thinks so too. Mrs. Lynde says he just worships the ground she
treads on and she doesn’t really think it right for a minister to
set his affections so much on a mortal being. But then, Diana, even
ministers are human and have their besetting sins just like everybody
else. I had such an interesting talk with Mrs. Allan about besetting
sins last Sunday afternoon. There are just a few things it’s proper
to talk about on Sundays and that is one of them. My besetting sin is
imagining too much and forgetting my duties. I’m striving very hard
to overcome it and now that I’m really thirteen perhaps I’ll get on
better.”

“In four more years we’ll be able to put our hair up,” said Diana.
“Alice Bell is only sixteen and she is wearing hers up, but I think
that’s ridiculous. I shall wait until I’m seventeen.”

“If I had Alice Bell’s crooked nose,” said Anne decidedly, “I
wouldn’t--but there! I won’t say what I was going to because it was
extremely uncharitable. Besides, I was comparing it with my own nose and
that’s vanity. I’m afraid I think too much about my nose ever since I
heard that compliment about it long ago. It really is a great comfort to
me. Oh, Diana, look, there’s a rabbit. That’s something to remember for
our woods composition. I really think the woods are just as lovely in
winter as in summer. They’re so white and still, as if they were asleep
and dreaming pretty dreams.”

“I won’t mind writing that composition when its time comes,” sighed
Diana. “I can manage to write about the woods, but the one we’re to
hand in Monday is terrible. The idea of Miss Stacy telling us to write a
story out of our own heads!”

“Why, it’s as easy as wink,” said Anne.

“It’s easy for you because you have an imagination,” retorted Diana,
“but what would you do if you had been born without one? I suppose you
have your composition all done?”

Anne nodded, trying hard not to look virtuously complacent and failing
miserably.

“I wrote it last Monday evening. It’s called ‘The Jealous Rival; or In
Death Not Divided.’ I read it to Marilla and she said it was stuff and
nonsense. Then I read it to Matthew and he said it was fine. That is
the kind of critic I like. It’s a sad, sweet story. I just cried like
a child while I was writing it. It’s about two beautiful maidens called
Cordelia Montmorency and Geraldine Seymour who lived in the same village
and were devotedly attached to each other. Cordelia was a regal brunette
with a coronet of midnight hair and duskly flashing eyes. Geraldine was
a queenly blonde with hair like spun gold and velvety purple eyes.”

“I never saw anybody with purple eyes,” said Diana dubiously.

“Neither did I. I just imagined them. I wanted something out of the
common. Geraldine had an alabaster brow too. I’ve found out what an
alabaster brow is. That is one of the advantages of being thirteen. You
know so much more than you did when you were only twelve.”

“Well, what became of Cordelia and Geraldine?” asked Diana, who was
beginning to feel rather interested in their fate.

“They grew in beauty side by side until they were sixteen. Then Bertram
DeVere came to their native village and fell in love with the fair
Geraldine. He saved her life when her horse ran away with her in a
carriage, and she fainted in his arms and he carried her home three
miles; because, you understand, the carriage was all smashed up. I found
it rather hard to imagine the proposal because I had no experience to
go by. I asked Ruby Gillis if she knew anything about how men proposed
because I thought she’d likely be an authority on the subject, having so
many sisters married. Ruby told me she was hid in the hall pantry when
Malcolm Andres proposed to her sister Susan. She said Malcolm told Susan
that his dad had given him the farm in his own name and then said, ‘What
do you say, darling pet, if we get hitched this fall?’ And Susan said,
‘Yes--no--I don’t know--let me see’--and there they were, engaged as
quick as that. But I didn’t think that sort of a proposal was a very
romantic one, so in the end I had to imagine it out as well as I could.
I made it very flowery and poetical and Bertram went on his knees,
although Ruby Gillis says it isn’t done nowadays. Geraldine accepted
him in a speech a page long. I can tell you I took a lot of trouble
with that speech. I rewrote it five times and I look upon it as my
masterpiece. Bertram gave her a diamond ring and a ruby necklace
and told her they would go to Europe for a wedding tour, for he was
immensely wealthy. But then, alas, shadows began to darken over their
path. Cordelia was secretly in love with Bertram herself and when
Geraldine told her about the engagement she was simply furious,
especially when she saw the necklace and the diamond ring. All her
affection for Geraldine turned to bitter hate and she vowed that she
should never marry Bertram. But she pretended to be Geraldine’s friend
the same as ever. One evening they were standing on the bridge over a
rushing turbulent stream and Cordelia, thinking they were alone, pushed
Geraldine over the brink with a wild, mocking, ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ But Bertram
saw it all and he at once plunged into the current, exclaiming, ‘I
will save thee, my peerless Geraldine.’ But alas, he had forgotten he
couldn’t swim, and they were both drowned, clasped in each other’s arms.
Their bodies were washed ashore soon afterwards. They were buried in the
one grave and their funeral was most imposing, Diana. It’s so much
more romantic to end a story up with a funeral than a wedding. As for
Cordelia, she went insane with remorse and was shut up in a lunatic
asylum. I thought that was a poetical retribution for her crime.”

“How perfectly lovely!” sighed Diana, who belonged to Matthew’s school
of critics. “I don’t see how you can make up such thrilling things out
of your own head, Anne. I wish my imagination was as good as yours.”

“It would be if you’d only cultivate it,” said Anne cheeringly. “I’ve
just thought of a plan, Diana. Let you and me have a story club all our
own and write stories for practice. I’ll help you along until you can
do them by yourself. You ought to cultivate your imagination, you know.
Miss Stacy says so. Only we must take the right way. I told her about
the Haunted Wood, but she said we went the wrong way about it in that.”

This was how the story club came into existence. It was limited to Diana
and Anne at first, but soon it was extended to include Jane Andrews
and Ruby Gillis and one or two others who felt that their imaginations
needed cultivating. No boys were allowed in it--although Ruby Gillis
opined that their admission would make it more exciting--and each member
had to produce one story a week.

“It’s extremely interesting,” Anne told Marilla. “Each girl has to read
her story out loud and then we talk it over. We are going to keep them
all sacredly and have them to read to our descendants. We each write
under a nom-de-plume. Mine is Rosamond Montmorency. All the girls
do pretty well. Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental. She puts too much
lovemaking into her stories and you know too much is worse than too
little. Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly
when she had to read it out loud. Jane’s stories are extremely sensible.
Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time
she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get
rid of them. I mostly always have to tell them what to write about, but
that isn’t hard for I’ve millions of ideas.”

“I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,” scoffed
Marilla. “You’ll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time
that should be put on your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but
writing them is worse.”

“But we’re so careful to put a moral into them all, Marilla,” explained
Anne. “I insist upon that. All the good people are rewarded and all
the bad ones are suitably punished. I’m sure that must have a wholesome
effect. The moral is the great thing. Mr. Allan says so. I read one of
my stories to him and Mrs. Allan and they both agreed that the moral was
excellent. Only they laughed in the wrong places. I like it better when
people cry. Jane and Ruby almost always cry when I come to the pathetic
parts. Diana wrote her Aunt Josephine about our club and her Aunt
Josephine wrote back that we were to send her some of our stories. So
we copied out four of our very best and sent them. Miss Josephine Barry
wrote back that she had never read anything so amusing in her life. That
kind of puzzled us because the stories were all very pathetic and almost
everybody died. But I’m glad Miss Barry liked them. It shows our club
is doing some good in the world. Mrs. Allan says that ought to be our
object in everything. I do really try to make it my object but I forget
so often when I’m having fun. I hope I shall be a little like Mrs. Allan
when I grow up. Do you think there is any prospect of it, Marilla?”

“I shouldn’t say there was a great deal” was Marilla’s encouraging
answer. “I’m sure Mrs. Allan was never such a silly, forgetful little
girl as you are.”

“No; but she wasn’t always so good as she is now either,” said Anne
seriously. “She told me so herself--that is, she said she was a dreadful
mischief when she was a girl and was always getting into scrapes. I felt
so encouraged when I heard that. Is it very wicked of me, Marilla,
to feel encouraged when I hear that other people have been bad and
mischievous? Mrs. Lynde says it is. Mrs. Lynde says she always feels
shocked when she hears of anyone ever having been naughty, no matter how
small they were. Mrs. Lynde says she once heard a minister confess that
when he was a boy he stole a strawberry tart out of his aunt’s pantry
and she never had any respect for that minister again. Now, I wouldn’t
have felt that way. I’d have thought that it was real noble of him to
confess it, and I’d have thought what an encouraging thing it would be
for small boys nowadays who do naughty things and are sorry for them
to know that perhaps they may grow up to be ministers in spite of it.
That’s how I’d feel, Marilla.”

“The way I feel at present, Anne,” said Marilla, “is that it’s high time
you had those dishes washed. You’ve taken half an hour longer than
you should with all your chattering. Learn to work first and talk
afterwards.”


CHAPTER XXVII. Vanity and Vexation of Spirit


Marilla, walking home one late April evening from an Aid meeting,
realized that the winter was over and gone with the thrill of delight
that spring never fails to bring to the oldest and saddest as well as to
the youngest and merriest. Marilla was not given to subjective analysis
of her thoughts and feelings. She probably imagined that she was
thinking about the Aids and their missionary box and the new carpet
for the vestry room, but under these reflections was a harmonious
consciousness of red fields smoking into pale-purply mists in the
declining sun, of long, sharp-pointed fir shadows falling over the
meadow beyond the brook, of still, crimson-budded maples around a
mirrorlike wood pool, of a wakening in the world and a stir of hidden
pulses under the gray sod. The spring was abroad in the land and
Marilla’s sober, middle-aged step was lighter and swifter because of its
deep, primal gladness.

Her eyes dwelt affectionately on Green Gables, peering through its
network of trees and reflecting the sunlight back from its windows in
several little coruscations of glory. Marilla, as she picked her steps
along the damp lane, thought that it was really a satisfaction to know
that she was going home to a briskly snapping wood fire and a table
nicely spread for tea, instead of to the cold comfort of old Aid meeting
evenings before Anne had come to Green Gables.

Consequently, when Marilla entered her kitchen and found the fire black
out, with no sign of Anne anywhere, she felt justly disappointed and
irritated. She had told Anne to be sure and have tea ready at five
o’clock, but now she must hurry to take off her second-best dress and
prepare the meal herself against Matthew’s return from plowing.

“I’ll settle Miss Anne when she comes home,” said Marilla grimly, as
she shaved up kindlings with a carving knife and with more vim than was
strictly necessary. Matthew had come in and was waiting patiently for
his tea in his corner. “She’s gadding off somewhere with Diana, writing
stories or practicing dialogues or some such tomfoolery, and never
thinking once about the time or her duties. She’s just got to be pulled
up short and sudden on this sort of thing. I don’t care if Mrs. Allan
does say she’s the brightest and sweetest child she ever knew. She may
be bright and sweet enough, but her head is full of nonsense and there’s
never any knowing what shape it’ll break out in next. Just as soon as
she grows out of one freak she takes up with another. But there! Here I
am saying the very thing I was so riled with Rachel Lynde for saying at
the Aid today. I was real glad when Mrs. Allan spoke up for Anne, for
if she hadn’t I know I’d have said something too sharp to Rachel before
everybody. Anne’s got plenty of faults, goodness knows, and far be it
from me to deny it. But I’m bringing her up and not Rachel Lynde, who’d
pick faults in the Angel Gabriel himself if he lived in Avonlea. Just
the same, Anne has no business to leave the house like this when I told
her she was to stay home this afternoon and look after things. I must
say, with all her faults, I never found her disobedient or untrustworthy
before and I’m real sorry to find her so now.”

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew, who, being patient and wise and,
above all, hungry, had deemed it best to let Marilla talk her wrath
out unhindered, having learned by experience that she got through
with whatever work was on hand much quicker if not delayed by untimely
argument. “Perhaps you’re judging her too hasty, Marilla. Don’t call her
untrustworthy until you’re sure she has disobeyed you. Mebbe it can all
be explained--Anne’s a great hand at explaining.”

“She’s not here when I told her to stay,” retorted Marilla. “I reckon
she’ll find it hard to explain _that_ to my satisfaction. Of course I knew
you’d take her part, Matthew. But I’m bringing her up, not you.”

It was dark when supper was ready, and still no sign of Anne, coming
hurriedly over the log bridge or up Lover’s Lane, breathless and
repentant with a sense of neglected duties. Marilla washed and put away
the dishes grimly. Then, wanting a candle to light her way down the
cellar, she went up to the east gable for the one that generally stood
on Anne’s table. Lighting it, she turned around to see Anne herself
lying on the bed, face downward among the pillows.

“Mercy on us,” said astonished Marilla, “have you been asleep, Anne?”

“No,” was the muffled reply.

“Are you sick then?” demanded Marilla anxiously, going over to the bed.

Anne cowered deeper into her pillows as if desirous of hiding herself
forever from mortal eyes.

“No. But please, Marilla, go away and don’t look at me. I’m in the
depths of despair and I don’t care who gets head in class or writes the
best composition or sings in the Sunday-school choir any more. Little
things like that are of no importance now because I don’t suppose I’ll
ever be able to go anywhere again. My career is closed. Please, Marilla,
go away and don’t look at me.”

“Did anyone ever hear the like?” the mystified Marilla wanted to know.
“Anne Shirley, whatever is the matter with you? What have you done? Get
right up this minute and tell me. This minute, I say. There now, what is
it?”

Anne had slid to the floor in despairing obedience.

“Look at my hair, Marilla,” she whispered.

Accordingly, Marilla lifted her candle and looked scrutinizingly at
Anne’s hair, flowing in heavy masses down her back. It certainly had a
very strange appearance.

“Anne Shirley, what have you done to your hair? Why, it’s _green!_”

Green it might be called, if it were any earthly color--a queer,
dull, bronzy green, with streaks here and there of the original red
to heighten the ghastly effect. Never in all her life had Marilla seen
anything so grotesque as Anne’s hair at that moment.

“Yes, it’s green,” moaned Anne. “I thought nothing could be as bad as
red hair. But now I know it’s ten times worse to have green hair. Oh,
Marilla, you little know how utterly wretched I am.”

“I little know how you got into this fix, but I mean to find out,” said
Marilla. “Come right down to the kitchen--it’s too cold up here--and
tell me just what you’ve done. I’ve been expecting something queer for
some time. You haven’t got into any scrape for over two months, and I
was sure another one was due. Now, then, what did you do to your hair?”

“I dyed it.”

“Dyed it! Dyed your hair! Anne Shirley, didn’t you know it was a wicked
thing to do?”

“Yes, I knew it was a little wicked,” admitted Anne. “But I thought it
was worth while to be a little wicked to get rid of red hair. I counted
the cost, Marilla. Besides, I meant to be extra good in other ways to
make up for it.”

“Well,” said Marilla sarcastically, “if I’d decided it was worth while
to dye my hair I’d have dyed it a decent color at least. I wouldn’t have
dyed it green.”

“But I didn’t mean to dye it green, Marilla,” protested Anne dejectedly.
“If I was wicked I meant to be wicked to some purpose. He said it would
turn my hair a beautiful raven black--he positively assured me that it
would. How could I doubt his word, Marilla? I know what it feels like
to have your word doubted. And Mrs. Allan says we should never suspect
anyone of not telling us the truth unless we have proof that they’re
not. I have proof now--green hair is proof enough for anybody. But I
hadn’t then and I believed every word he said _implicitly_.”

“Who said? Who are you talking about?”

“The peddler that was here this afternoon. I bought the dye from him.”

“Anne Shirley, how often have I told you never to let one of those
Italians in the house! I don’t believe in encouraging them to come
around at all.”

“Oh, I didn’t let him in the house. I remembered what you told me, and I
went out, carefully shut the door, and looked at his things on the step.
Besides, he wasn’t an Italian--he was a German Jew. He had a big box
full of very interesting things and he told me he was working hard to
make enough money to bring his wife and children out from Germany. He
spoke so feelingly about them that it touched my heart. I wanted to buy
something from him to help him in such a worthy object. Then all at once
I saw the bottle of hair dye. The peddler said it was warranted to dye
any hair a beautiful raven black and wouldn’t wash off. In a trice I
saw myself with beautiful raven-black hair and the temptation was
irresistible. But the price of the bottle was seventy-five cents and I
had only fifty cents left out of my chicken money. I think the peddler
had a very kind heart, for he said that, seeing it was me, he’d sell it
for fifty cents and that was just giving it away. So I bought it, and as
soon as he had gone I came up here and applied it with an old hairbrush
as the directions said. I used up the whole bottle, and oh, Marilla,
when I saw the dreadful color it turned my hair I repented of being
wicked, I can tell you. And I’ve been repenting ever since.”

“Well, I hope you’ll repent to good purpose,” said Marilla severely,
“and that you’ve got your eyes opened to where your vanity has led you,
Anne. Goodness knows what’s to be done. I suppose the first thing is to
give your hair a good washing and see if that will do any good.”

Accordingly, Anne washed her hair, scrubbing it vigorously with soap and
water, but for all the difference it made she might as well have been
scouring its original red. The peddler had certainly spoken the truth
when he declared that the dye wouldn’t wash off, however his veracity
might be impeached in other respects.

“Oh, Marilla, what shall I do?” questioned Anne in tears. “I can never
live this down. People have pretty well forgotten my other mistakes--the
liniment cake and setting Diana drunk and flying into a temper with
Mrs. Lynde. But they’ll never forget this. They will think I am not
respectable. Oh, Marilla, ‘what a tangled web we weave when first we
practice to deceive.’ That is poetry, but it is true. And oh, how Josie
Pye will laugh! Marilla, I _cannot_ face Josie Pye. I am the unhappiest
girl in Prince Edward Island.”

Anne’s unhappiness continued for a week. During that time she went
nowhere and shampooed her hair every day. Diana alone of outsiders knew
the fatal secret, but she promised solemnly never to tell, and it may
be stated here and now that she kept her word. At the end of the week
Marilla said decidedly:

“It’s no use, Anne. That is fast dye if ever there was any. Your hair
must be cut off; there is no other way. You can’t go out with it looking
like that.”

Anne’s lips quivered, but she realized the bitter truth of Marilla’s
remarks. With a dismal sigh she went for the scissors.

“Please cut it off at once, Marilla, and have it over. Oh, I feel that
my heart is broken. This is such an unromantic affliction. The girls in
books lose their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good
deed, and I’m sure I wouldn’t mind losing my hair in some such fashion
half so much. But there is nothing comforting in having your hair cut
off because you’ve dyed it a dreadful color, is there? I’m going to weep
all the time you’re cutting it off, if it won’t interfere. It seems such
a tragic thing.”

Anne wept then, but later on, when she went upstairs and looked in the
glass, she was calm with despair. Marilla had done her work thoroughly
and it had been necessary to shingle the hair as closely as possible.
The result was not becoming, to state the case as mildly as may be. Anne
promptly turned her glass to the wall.

“I’ll never, never look at myself again until my hair grows,” she
exclaimed passionately.

Then she suddenly righted the glass.

“Yes, I will, too. I’d do penance for being wicked that way. I’ll look
at myself every time I come to my room and see how ugly I am. And I
won’t try to imagine it away, either. I never thought I was vain about
my hair, of all things, but now I know I was, in spite of its being
red, because it was so long and thick and curly. I expect something will
happen to my nose next.”

Anne’s clipped head made a sensation in school on the following Monday,
but to her relief nobody guessed the real reason for it, not even Josie
Pye, who, however, did not fail to inform Anne that she looked like a
perfect scarecrow.

“I didn’t say anything when Josie said that to me,” Anne confided
that evening to Marilla, who was lying on the sofa after one of her
headaches, “because I thought it was part of my punishment and I ought
to bear it patiently. It’s hard to be told you look like a scarecrow
and I wanted to say something back. But I didn’t. I just swept her one
scornful look and then I forgave her. It makes you feel very virtuous
when you forgive people, doesn’t it? I mean to devote all my energies
to being good after this and I shall never try to be beautiful again. Of
course it’s better to be good. I know it is, but it’s sometimes so hard
to believe a thing even when you know it. I do really want to be good,
Marilla, like you and Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy, and grow up to be a
credit to you. Diana says when my hair begins to grow to tie a black
velvet ribbon around my head with a bow at one side. She says she
thinks it will be very becoming. I will call it a snood--that sounds so
romantic. But am I talking too much, Marilla? Does it hurt your head?”

“My head is better now. It was terrible bad this afternoon, though.
These headaches of mine are getting worse and worse. I’ll have to see
a doctor about them. As for your chatter, I don’t know that I mind
it--I’ve got so used to it.”

Which was Marilla’s way of saying that she liked to hear it.


CHAPTER XXVIII. An Unfortunate Lily Maid


|OF course you must be Elaine, Anne,” said Diana. “I could never have
the courage to float down there.”

“Nor I,” said Ruby Gillis, with a shiver. “I don’t mind floating down
when there’s two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up. It’s fun
then. But to lie down and pretend I was dead--I just couldn’t. I’d die
really of fright.”

“Of course it would be romantic,” conceded Jane Andrews, “but I know I
couldn’t keep still. I’d be popping up every minute or so to see where I
was and if I wasn’t drifting too far out. And you know, Anne, that would
spoil the effect.”

“But it’s so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine,” mourned Anne. “I’m
not afraid to float down and I’d love to be Elaine. But it’s ridiculous
just the same. Ruby ought to be Elaine because she is so fair and has
such lovely long golden hair--Elaine had ‘all her bright hair streaming
down,’ you know. And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, a red-haired person
cannot be a lily maid.”

“Your complexion is just as fair as Ruby’s,” said Diana earnestly, “and
your hair is ever so much darker than it used to be before you cut it.”

“Oh, do you really think so?” exclaimed Anne, flushing sensitively with
delight. “I’ve sometimes thought it was myself--but I never dared to ask
anyone for fear she would tell me it wasn’t. Do you think it could be
called auburn now, Diana?”

“Yes, and I think it is real pretty,” said Diana, looking admiringly at
the short, silky curls that clustered over Anne’s head and were held in
place by a very jaunty black velvet ribbon and bow.

They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, where
a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tip
was a small wooden platform built out into the water for the convenience
of fishermen and duck hunters. Ruby and Jane were spending the midsummer
afternoon with Diana, and Anne had come over to play with them.

Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on and about
the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell having ruthlessly
cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring.
Anne had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the
romance of it; but she was speedily consoled, for, after all, as she and
Diana said, big girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for
such childish amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating
sports to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout
over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about in the
little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting.

It was Anne’s idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied
Tennyson’s poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent of
Education having prescribed it in the English course for the Prince
Edward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to
pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all
left in it for them, but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and
Guinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Anne
was devoured by secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot.
Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present.

Anne’s plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that if
the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down
with the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another
headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had often
gone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playing
Elaine.

“Well, I’ll be Elaine,” said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for, although
she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet
her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her
limitations made impossible. “Ruby, you must be King Arthur and Jane
will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot. But first you must be the
brothers and the father. We can’t have the old dumb servitor because
there isn’t room for two in the flat when one is lying down. We must
pall the barge all its length in blackest samite. That old black shawl
of your mother’s will be just the thing, Diana.”

The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the flat and
then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her
breast.

“Oh, she does look really dead,” whispered Ruby Gillis nervously,
watching the still, white little face under the flickering shadows of
the birches. “It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it’s
really right to act like this? Mrs. Lynde says that all play-acting is
abominably wicked.”

“Ruby, you shouldn’t talk about Mrs. Lynde,” said Anne severely. “It
spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Lynde
was born. Jane, you arrange this. It’s silly for Elaine to be talking
when she’s dead.”

Jane rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none,
but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellent
substitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect of
a tall blue iris placed in one of Anne’s folded hands was all that could
be desired.

“Now, she’s all ready,” said Jane. “We must kiss her quiet brows
and, Diana, you say, ‘Sister, farewell forever,’ and Ruby, you say,
‘Farewell, sweet sister,’ both of you as sorrowfully as you possibly
can. Anne, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine ‘lay as
though she smiled.’ That’s better. Now push the flat off.”

The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old
embedded stake in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited long
enough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge before
scampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to the lower
headland where, as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to be
in readiness to receive the lily maid.

For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her
situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The
flat began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for Elaine
to scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall
of blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her
barge through which the water was literally pouring. That sharp stake at
the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Anne
did not know this, but it did not take her long to realize that she was
in a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink long
before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the oars? Left
behind at the landing!

Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was
white to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There was
one chance--just one.

“I was horribly frightened,” she told Mrs. Allan the next day, “and it
seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and the
water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly,
but I didn’t shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could
save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge
piles for me to climb up on it. You know the piles are just old tree
trunks and there are lots of knots and old branch stubs on them. It was
proper to pray, but I had to do my part by watching out and right well
I knew it. I just said, ‘Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile
and I’ll do the rest,’ over and over again. Under such circumstances you
don’t think much about making a flowery prayer. But mine was answered,
for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and I flung the scarf
and the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up on a big providential
stub. And there I was, Mrs. Allan, clinging to that slippery old pile
with no way of getting up or down. It was a very unromantic position,
but I didn’t think about that at the time. You don’t think much about
romance when you have just escaped from a watery grave. I said a
grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding on
tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to get
back to dry land.”

The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream.
Ruby, Jane, and Diana, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw it
disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Anne
had gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, white as sheets,
frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of
their voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, never
pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge.
Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold, saw their flying
forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile her
position was a very uncomfortable one.

The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily
maid. Why didn’t somebody come? Where had the girls gone? Suppose they
had fainted, one and all! Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so
tired and cramped that she could hold on no longer! Anne looked at the
wicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily shadows, and
shivered. Her imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome
possibilities to her.

Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her
arms and wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under the
bridge in Harmon Andrews’s dory!

Gilbert glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white
scornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also
scornful gray eyes.

“Anne Shirley! How on earth did you get there?” he exclaimed.

Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended
his hand. There was no help for it; Anne, clinging to Gilbert Blythe’s
hand, scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious,
in the stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. It was
certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances!

“What has happened, Anne?” asked Gilbert, taking up his oars. “We were
playing Elaine” explained Anne frigidly, without even looking at her
rescuer, “and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge--I mean the
flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile. The girls
went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the landing?”

Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, disdaining assistance,
sprang nimbly on shore.

“I’m very much obliged to you,” she said haughtily as she turned away.
But Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand
on her arm.

“Anne,” he said hurriedly, “look here. Can’t we be good friends? I’m
awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn’t mean to vex
you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it’s so long ago. I think
your hair is awfully pretty now--honest I do. Let’s be friends.”

For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened
consciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy,
half-eager expression in Gilbert’s hazel eyes was something that was
very good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the
bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering
determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her
recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert had
called her “carrots” and had brought about her disgrace before the whole
school. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as
laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time
seemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him!

“No,” she said coldly, “I shall never be friends with you, Gilbert
Blythe; and I don’t want to be!”

“All right!” Gilbert sprang into his skiff with an angry color in his
cheeks. “I’ll never ask you to be friends again, Anne Shirley. And I
don’t care either!”

He pulled away with swift defiant strokes, and Anne went up the steep,
ferny little path under the maples. She held her head very high, but
she was conscious of an odd feeling of regret. She almost wished she had
answered Gilbert differently. Of course, he had insulted her terribly,
but still--! Altogether, Anne rather thought it would be a relief to
sit down and have a good cry. She was really quite unstrung, for the
reaction from her fright and cramped clinging was making itself felt.

Halfway up the path she met Jane and Diana rushing back to the pond in
a state narrowly removed from positive frenzy. They had found nobody at
Orchard Slope, both Mr. and Mrs. Barry being away. Here Ruby Gillis had
succumbed to hysterics, and was left to recover from them as best she
might, while Jane and Diana flew through the Haunted Wood and across the
brook to Green Gables. There they had found nobody either, for Marilla
had gone to Carmody and Matthew was making hay in the back field.

“Oh, Anne,” gasped Diana, fairly falling on the former’s neck
and weeping with relief and delight, “oh, Anne--we thought--you
were--drowned--and we felt like murderers--because we had made--you
be--Elaine. And Ruby is in hysterics--oh, Anne, how did you escape?”

“I climbed up on one of the piles,” explained Anne wearily, “and Gilbert
Blythe came along in Mr. Andrews’s dory and brought me to land.”

“Oh, Anne, how splendid of him! Why, it’s so romantic!” said Jane,
finding breath enough for utterance at last. “Of course you’ll speak to
him after this.”

“Of course I won’t,” flashed Anne, with a momentary return of her old
spirit. “And I don’t want ever to hear the word ‘romantic’ again, Jane
Andrews. I’m awfully sorry you were so frightened, girls. It is all my
fault. I feel sure I was born under an unlucky star. Everything I do
gets me or my dearest friends into a scrape. We’ve gone and lost your
father’s flat, Diana, and I have a presentiment that we’ll not be
allowed to row on the pond any more.”

Anne’s presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are apt
to do. Great was the consternation in the Barry and Cuthbert households
when the events of the afternoon became known.

“Will you ever have any sense, Anne?” groaned Marilla.

“Oh, yes, I think I will, Marilla,” returned Anne optimistically. A good
cry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothed
her nerves and restored her to her wonted cheerfulness. “I think my
prospects of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever.”

“I don’t see how,” said Marilla.

“Well,” explained Anne, “I’ve learned a new and valuable lesson today.
Ever since I came to Green Gables I’ve been making mistakes, and each
mistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming. The affair of
the amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things that didn’t belong
to me. The Haunted Wood mistake cured me of letting my imagination run
away with me. The liniment cake mistake cured me of carelessness in
cooking. Dyeing my hair cured me of vanity. I never think about my hair
and nose now--at least, very seldom. And today’s mistake is going to
cure me of being too romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it is
no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea. It was probably easy enough in
towered Camelot hundreds of years ago, but romance is not appreciated
now. I feel quite sure that you will soon see a great improvement in me
in this respect, Marilla.”

“I’m sure I hope so,” said Marilla skeptically.

But Matthew, who had been sitting mutely in his corner, laid a hand on
Anne’s shoulder when Marilla had gone out.

“Don’t give up all your romance, Anne,” he whispered shyly, “a little
of it is a good thing--not too much, of course--but keep a little of it,
Anne, keep a little of it.”


CHAPTER XXIX. An Epoch in Anne’s Life


|ANNE was bringing the cows home from the back pasture by way of Lover’s
Lane. It was a September evening and all the gaps and clearings in the
woods were brimmed up with ruby sunset light. Here and there the lane
was splashed with it, but for the most part it was already quite shadowy
beneath the maples, and the spaces under the firs were filled with a
clear violet dusk like airy wine. The winds were out in their tops, and
there is no sweeter music on earth than that which the wind makes in the
fir trees at evening.

The cows swung placidly down the lane, and Anne followed them dreamily,
repeating aloud the battle canto from _Marmion_--which had also been part
of their English course the preceding winter and which Miss Stacy had
made them learn off by heart--and exulting in its rushing lines and the
clash of spears in its imagery. When she came to the lines

       The stubborn spearsmen still made good
       Their dark impenetrable wood,

she stopped in ecstasy to shut her eyes that she might the better fancy
herself one of that heroic ring. When she opened them again it was to
behold Diana coming through the gate that led into the Barry field and
looking so important that Anne instantly divined there was news to be
told. But betray too eager curiosity she would not.

“Isn’t this evening just like a purple dream, Diana? It makes me so glad
to be alive. In the mornings I always think the mornings are best; but
when evening comes I think it’s lovelier still.”

“It’s a very fine evening,” said Diana, “but oh, I have such news, Anne.
Guess. You can have three guesses.”

“Charlotte Gillis is going to be married in the church after all and
Mrs. Allan wants us to decorate it,” cried Anne.

“No. Charlotte’s beau won’t agree to that, because nobody ever has been
married in the church yet, and he thinks it would seem too much like a
funeral. It’s too mean, because it would be such fun. Guess again.”

“Jane’s mother is going to let her have a birthday party?”

Diana shook her head, her black eyes dancing with merriment.

“I can’t think what it can be,” said Anne in despair, “unless it’s that
Moody Spurgeon MacPherson saw you home from prayer meeting last night.
Did he?”

“I should think not,” exclaimed Diana indignantly. “I wouldn’t be likely
to boast of it if he did, the horrid creature! I knew you couldn’t guess
it. Mother had a letter from Aunt Josephine today, and Aunt Josephine
wants you and me to go to town next Tuesday and stop with her for the
Exhibition. There!”

“Oh, Diana,” whispered Anne, finding it necessary to lean up against a
maple tree for support, “do you really mean it? But I’m afraid Marilla
won’t let me go. She will say that she can’t encourage gadding about.
That was what she said last week when Jane invited me to go with them
in their double-seated buggy to the American concert at the White Sands
Hotel. I wanted to go, but Marilla said I’d be better at home learning
my lessons and so would Jane. I was bitterly disappointed, Diana. I felt
so heartbroken that I wouldn’t say my prayers when I went to bed. But I
repented of that and got up in the middle of the night and said them.”

“I’ll tell you,” said Diana, “we’ll get Mother to ask Marilla. She’ll be
more likely to let you go then; and if she does we’ll have the time
of our lives, Anne. I’ve never been to an Exhibition, and it’s so
aggravating to hear the other girls talking about their trips. Jane and
Ruby have been twice, and they’re going this year again.”

“I’m not going to think about it at all until I know whether I can go
or not,” said Anne resolutely. “If I did and then was disappointed, it
would be more than I could bear. But in case I do go I’m very glad my
new coat will be ready by that time. Marilla didn’t think I needed a new
coat. She said my old one would do very well for another winter and
that I ought to be satisfied with having a new dress. The dress is very
pretty, Diana--navy blue and made so fashionably. Marilla always makes
my dresses fashionably now, because she says she doesn’t intend to have
Matthew going to Mrs. Lynde to make them. I’m so glad. It is ever so
much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable. At least, it is
easier for me. I suppose it doesn’t make such a difference to naturally
good people. But Matthew said I must have a new coat, so Marilla
bought a lovely piece of blue broadcloth, and it’s being made by a real
dressmaker over at Carmody. It’s to be done Saturday night, and I’m
trying not to imagine myself walking up the church aisle on Sunday in
my new suit and cap, because I’m afraid it isn’t right to imagine such
things. But it just slips into my mind in spite of me. My cap is so
pretty. Matthew bought it for me the day we were over at Carmody. It is
one of those little blue velvet ones that are all the rage, with gold
cord and tassels. Your new hat is elegant, Diana, and so becoming. When
I saw you come into church last Sunday my heart swelled with pride to
think you were my dearest friend. Do you suppose it’s wrong for us to
think so much about our clothes? Marilla says it is very sinful. But it
is such an interesting subject, isn’t it?”

Marilla agreed to let Anne go to town, and it was arranged that
Mr. Barry should take the girls in on the following Tuesday. As
Charlottetown was thirty miles away and Mr. Barry wished to go and
return the same day, it was necessary to make a very early start. But
Anne counted it all joy, and was up before sunrise on Tuesday morning.
A glance from her window assured her that the day would be fine, for
the eastern sky behind the firs of the Haunted Wood was all silvery
and cloudless. Through the gap in the trees a light was shining in the
western gable of Orchard Slope, a token that Diana was also up.

Anne was dressed by the time Matthew had the fire on and had the
breakfast ready when Marilla came down, but for her own part was much
too excited to eat. After breakfast the jaunty new cap and jacket were
donned, and Anne hastened over the brook and up through the firs to
Orchard Slope. Mr. Barry and Diana were waiting for her, and they were
soon on the road.

It was a long drive, but Anne and Diana enjoyed every minute of it. It
was delightful to rattle along over the moist roads in the early red
sunlight that was creeping across the shorn harvest fields. The air was
fresh and crisp, and little smoke-blue mists curled through the valleys
and floated off from the hills. Sometimes the road went through woods
where maples were beginning to hang out scarlet banners; sometimes it
crossed rivers on bridges that made Anne’s flesh cringe with the old,
half-delightful fear; sometimes it wound along a harbor shore and passed
by a little cluster of weather-gray fishing huts; again it mounted to
hills whence a far sweep of curving upland or misty-blue sky could be
seen; but wherever it went there was much of interest to discuss. It was
almost noon when they reached town and found their way to “Beechwood.”
 It was quite a fine old mansion, set back from the street in a seclusion
of green elms and branching beeches. Miss Barry met them at the door
with a twinkle in her sharp black eyes.

“So you’ve come to see me at last, you Anne-girl,” she said. “Mercy,
child, how you have grown! You’re taller than I am, I declare. And
you’re ever so much better looking than you used to be, too. But I dare
say you know that without being told.”

“Indeed I didn’t,” said Anne radiantly. “I know I’m not so freckled as
I used to be, so I’ve much to be thankful for, but I really hadn’t dared
to hope there was any other improvement. I’m so glad you think there is,
Miss Barry.” Miss Barry’s house was furnished with “great magnificence,”
 as Anne told Marilla afterward. The two little country girls were rather
abashed by the splendor of the parlor where Miss Barry left them when
she went to see about dinner.

“Isn’t it just like a palace?” whispered Diana. “I never was in Aunt
Josephine’s house before, and I’d no idea it was so grand. I just wish
Julia Bell could see this--she puts on such airs about her mother’s
parlor.”

“Velvet carpet,” sighed Anne luxuriously, “and silk curtains! I’ve
dreamed of such things, Diana. But do you know I don’t believe I feel
very comfortable with them after all. There are so many things in this
room and all so splendid that there is no scope for imagination. That is
one consolation when you are poor--there are so many more things you can
imagine about.”

Their sojourn in town was something that Anne and Diana dated from for
years. From first to last it was crowded with delights.

On Wednesday Miss Barry took them to the Exhibition grounds and kept
them there all day.

“It was splendid,” Anne related to Marilla later on. “I never imagined
anything so interesting. I don’t really know which department was the
most interesting. I think I liked the horses and the flowers and the
fancywork best. Josie Pye took first prize for knitted lace. I was
real glad she did. And I was glad that I felt glad, for it shows I’m
improving, don’t you think, Marilla, when I can rejoice in Josie’s
success? Mr. Harmon Andrews took second prize for Gravenstein apples
and Mr. Bell took first prize for a pig. Diana said she thought it was
ridiculous for a Sunday-school superintendent to take a prize in pigs,
but I don’t see why. Do you? She said she would always think of it after
this when he was praying so solemnly. Clara Louise MacPherson took a
prize for painting, and Mrs. Lynde got first prize for homemade butter
and cheese. So Avonlea was pretty well represented, wasn’t it? Mrs.
Lynde was there that day, and I never knew how much I really liked her
until I saw her familiar face among all those strangers. There
were thousands of people there, Marilla. It made me feel dreadfully
insignificant. And Miss Barry took us up to the grandstand to see
the horse races. Mrs. Lynde wouldn’t go; she said horse racing was an
abomination and, she being a church member, thought it her bounden duty
to set a good example by staying away. But there were so many there I
don’t believe Mrs. Lynde’s absence would ever be noticed. I don’t think,
though, that I ought to go very often to horse races, because they _are_
awfully fascinating. Diana got so excited that she offered to bet me
ten cents that the red horse would win. I didn’t believe he would, but
I refused to bet, because I wanted to tell Mrs. Allan all about
everything, and I felt sure it wouldn’t do to tell her that. It’s always
wrong to do anything you can’t tell the minister’s wife. It’s as good as
an extra conscience to have a minister’s wife for your friend. And I was
very glad I didn’t bet, because the red horse _did_ win, and I would have
lost ten cents. So you see that virtue was its own reward. We saw a man
go up in a balloon. I’d love to go up in a balloon, Marilla; it would
be simply thrilling; and we saw a man selling fortunes. You paid him ten
cents and a little bird picked out your fortune for you. Miss Barry gave
Diana and me ten cents each to have our fortunes told. Mine was that I
would marry a dark-complected man who was very wealthy, and I would go
across water to live. I looked carefully at all the dark men I saw after
that, but I didn’t care much for any of them, and anyhow I suppose
it’s too early to be looking out for him yet. Oh, it was a
never-to-be-forgotten day, Marilla. I was so tired I couldn’t sleep at
night. Miss Barry put us in the spare room, according to promise. It
was an elegant room, Marilla, but somehow sleeping in a spare room isn’t
what I used to think it was. That’s the worst of growing up, and I’m
beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a
child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.”

Thursday the girls had a drive in the park, and in the evening Miss
Barry took them to a concert in the Academy of Music, where a noted
prima donna was to sing. To Anne the evening was a glittering vision of
delight.

“Oh, Marilla, it was beyond description. I was so excited I couldn’t
even talk, so you may know what it was like. I just sat in enraptured
silence. Madame Selitsky was perfectly beautiful, and wore white satin
and diamonds. But when she began to sing I never thought about anything
else. Oh, I can’t tell you how I felt. But it seemed to me that it could
never be hard to be good any more. I felt like I do when I look up to
the stars. Tears came into my eyes, but, oh, they were such happy tears.
I was so sorry when it was all over, and I told Miss Barry I didn’t see
how I was ever to return to common life again. She said she thought if
we went over to the restaurant across the street and had an ice cream
it might help me. That sounded so prosaic; but to my surprise I found
it true. The ice cream was delicious, Marilla, and it was so lovely and
dissipated to be sitting there eating it at eleven o’clock at night.
Diana said she believed she was born for city life. Miss Barry asked
me what my opinion was, but I said I would have to think it over very
seriously before I could tell her what I really thought. So I thought it
over after I went to bed. That is the best time to think things out. And
I came to the conclusion, Marilla, that I wasn’t born for city life and
that I was glad of it. It’s nice to be eating ice cream at brilliant
restaurants at eleven o’clock at night once in a while; but as a regular
thing I’d rather be in the east gable at eleven, sound asleep, but kind
of knowing even in my sleep that the stars were shining outside and that
the wind was blowing in the firs across the brook. I told Miss Barry
so at breakfast the next morning and she laughed. Miss Barry generally
laughed at anything I said, even when I said the most solemn things. I
don’t think I liked it, Marilla, because I wasn’t trying to be funny.
But she is a most hospitable lady and treated us royally.”

Friday brought going-home time, and Mr. Barry drove in for the girls.

“Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves,” said Miss Barry, as she bade
them good-bye.

“Indeed we have,” said Diana.

“And you, Anne-girl?”

“I’ve enjoyed every minute of the time,” said Anne, throwing her arms
impulsively about the old woman’s neck and kissing her wrinkled cheek.
Diana would never have dared to do such a thing and felt rather aghast
at Anne’s freedom. But Miss Barry was pleased, and she stood on her
veranda and watched the buggy out of sight. Then she went back into her
big house with a sigh. It seemed very lonely, lacking those fresh young
lives. Miss Barry was a rather selfish old lady, if the truth must
be told, and had never cared much for anybody but herself. She valued
people only as they were of service to her or amused her. Anne had
amused her, and consequently stood high in the old lady’s good graces.
But Miss Barry found herself thinking less about Anne’s quaint speeches
than of her fresh enthusiasms, her transparent emotions, her little
winning ways, and the sweetness of her eyes and lips.

“I thought Marilla Cuthbert was an old fool when I heard she’d adopted
a girl out of an orphan asylum,” she said to herself, “but I guess she
didn’t make much of a mistake after all. If I’d a child like Anne in the
house all the time I’d be a better and happier woman.”

Anne and Diana found the drive home as pleasant as the drive
in--pleasanter, indeed, since there was the delightful consciousness of
home waiting at the end of it. It was sunset when they passed through
White Sands and turned into the shore road. Beyond, the Avonlea hills
came out darkly against the saffron sky. Behind them the moon was rising
out of the sea that grew all radiant and transfigured in her light.
Every little cove along the curving road was a marvel of dancing
ripples. The waves broke with a soft swish on the rocks below them, and
the tang of the sea was in the strong, fresh air.

“Oh, but it’s good to be alive and to be going home,” breathed Anne.

When she crossed the log bridge over the brook the kitchen light of
Green Gables winked her a friendly welcome back, and through the open
door shone the hearth fire, sending out its warm red glow athwart the
chilly autumn night. Anne ran blithely up the hill and into the kitchen,
where a hot supper was waiting on the table.

“So you’ve got back?” said Marilla, folding up her knitting.

“Yes, and oh, it’s so good to be back,” said Anne joyously. “I could
kiss everything, even to the clock. Marilla, a broiled chicken! You
don’t mean to say you cooked that for me!”

“Yes, I did,” said Marilla. “I thought you’d be hungry after such
a drive and need something real appetizing. Hurry and take off your
things, and we’ll have supper as soon as Matthew comes in. I’m glad
you’ve got back, I must say. It’s been fearful lonesome here without
you, and I never put in four longer days.”

After supper Anne sat before the fire between Matthew and Marilla, and
gave them a full account of her visit.

“I’ve had a splendid time,” she concluded happily, “and I feel that it
marks an epoch in my life. But the best of it all was the coming home.”


CHAPTER XXX. The Queens Class Is Organized


|MARILLA laid her knitting on her lap and leaned back in her chair. Her
eyes were tired, and she thought vaguely that she must see about having
her glasses changed the next time she went to town, for her eyes had
grown tired very often of late.

It was nearly dark, for the full November twilight had fallen around
Green Gables, and the only light in the kitchen came from the dancing
red flames in the stove.

Anne was curled up Turk-fashion on the hearthrug, gazing into that
joyous glow where the sunshine of a hundred summers was being distilled
from the maple cordwood. She had been reading, but her book had slipped
to the floor, and now she was dreaming, with a smile on her parted lips.
Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and
rainbows of her lively fancy; adventures wonderful and enthralling
were happening to her in cloudland--adventures that always turned out
triumphantly and never involved her in scrapes like those of actual
life.

Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been
suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling
of fireshine and shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself
easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn.
But she had learned to love this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection
all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love
made her afraid of being unduly indulgent, indeed. She had an uneasy
feeling that it was rather sinful to set one’s heart so intensely on any
human creature as she had set hers on Anne, and perhaps she performed a
sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical
than if the girl had been less dear to her. Certainly Anne herself had
no idea how Marilla loved her. She sometimes thought wistfully that
Marilla was very hard to please and distinctly lacking in sympathy
and understanding. But she always checked the thought reproachfully,
remembering what she owed to Marilla.

“Anne,” said Marilla abruptly, “Miss Stacy was here this afternoon when
you were out with Diana.”

Anne came back from her other world with a start and a sigh.

“Was she? Oh, I’m so sorry I wasn’t in. Why didn’t you call me, Marilla?
Diana and I were only over in the Haunted Wood. It’s lovely in the woods
now. All the little wood things--the ferns and the satin leaves and the
crackerberries--have gone to sleep, just as if somebody had tucked them
away until spring under a blanket of leaves. I think it was a little
gray fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the last
moonlight night and did it. Diana wouldn’t say much about that, though.
Diana has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about
imagining ghosts into the Haunted Wood. It had a very bad effect on
Diana’s imagination. It blighted it. Mrs. Lynde says Myrtle Bell is a
blighted being. I asked Ruby Gillis why Myrtle was blighted, and Ruby
said she guessed it was because her young man had gone back on her. Ruby
Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse
she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn’t do to
drag them into everything, does it? Diana and I are thinking seriously
of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids
and live together forever. Diana hasn’t quite made up her mind though,
because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild,
dashing, wicked young man and reform him. Diana and I talk a great deal
about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we are so much older
than we used to be that it isn’t becoming to talk of childish matters.
It’s such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took
all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and
talked to us about it. She said we couldn’t be too careful what habits
we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time
we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid
for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we
could never build anything really worth while on it. Diana and I talked
the matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn,
Marilla. And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and
form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as
possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be
properly developed. It’s perfectly appalling to think of being twenty,
Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. But why was Miss Stacy
here this afternoon?”

“That is what I want to tell you, Anne, if you’ll ever give me a chance
to get a word in edgewise. She was talking about you.”

“About me?” Anne looked rather scared. Then she flushed and exclaimed:

“Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Marilla, honestly
I did, but I forgot. Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben Hur in school
yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying my Canadian
history. Jane Andrews lent it to me. I was reading it at dinner hour,
and I had just got to the chariot race when school went in. I was simply
wild to know how it turned out--although I felt sure Ben Hur must win,
because it wouldn’t be poetical justice if he didn’t--so I spread the
history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and
my knee. I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know,
while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur. I was so interested in it
that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the aisle until all at
once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so
reproachful-like. I can’t tell you how ashamed I felt, Marilla,
especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben Hur
away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and
talked to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I
was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly,
I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a
history when it was a storybook instead. I had never realized until that
moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I
cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I’d never do such
a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking
at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned
out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn’t require that, and she forgave me
freely. So I think it wasn’t very kind of her to come up here to you
about it after all.”

“Miss Stacy never mentioned such a thing to me, Anne, and its only your
guilty conscience that’s the matter with you. You have no business to be
taking storybooks to school. You read too many novels anyhow. When I was
a girl I wasn’t so much as allowed to look at a novel.”

“Oh, how can you call Ben Hur a novel when it’s really such a religious
book?” protested Anne. “Of course it’s a little too exciting to be
proper reading for Sunday, and I only read it on weekdays. And I never
read _any_ book now unless either Miss Stacy or Mrs. Allan thinks it is a
proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read. Miss Stacy
made me promise that. She found me reading a book one day called, The
Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall. It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me,
and, oh, Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy. It just curdled the
blood in my veins. But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome
book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it. I
didn’t mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was _agonizing_
to give back that book without knowing how it turned out. But my love
for Miss Stacy stood the test and I did. It’s really wonderful, Marilla,
what you can do when you’re truly anxious to please a certain person.”

“Well, I guess I’ll light the lamp and get to work,” said Marilla. “I
see plainly that you don’t want to hear what Miss Stacy had to say.
You’re more interested in the sound of your own tongue than in anything
else.”

“Oh, indeed, Marilla, I do want to hear it,” cried Anne contritely. “I
won’t say another word--not one. I know I talk too much, but I am really
trying to overcome it, and although I say far too much, yet if you only
knew how many things I want to say and don’t, you’d give me some credit
for it. Please tell me, Marilla.”

“Well, Miss Stacy wants to organize a class among her advanced students
who mean to study for the entrance examination into Queen’s. She intends
to give them extra lessons for an hour after school. And she came to ask
Matthew and me if we would like to have you join it. What do you think
about it yourself, Anne? Would you like to go to Queen’s and pass for a
teacher?”

“Oh, Marilla!” Anne straightened to her knees and clasped her hands.
“It’s been the dream of my life--that is, for the last six months, ever
since Ruby and Jane began to talk of studying for the Entrance. But I
didn’t say anything about it, because I supposed it would be perfectly
useless. I’d love to be a teacher. But won’t it be dreadfully expensive?
Mr. Andrews says it cost him one hundred and fifty dollars to put Prissy
through, and Prissy wasn’t a dunce in geometry.”

“I guess you needn’t worry about that part of it. When Matthew and I
took you to bring up we resolved we would do the best we could for you
and give you a good education. I believe in a girl being fitted to earn
her own living whether she ever has to or not. You’ll always have a home
at Green Gables as long as Matthew and I are here, but nobody knows what
is going to happen in this uncertain world, and it’s just as well to be
prepared. So you can join the Queen’s class if you like, Anne.”

“Oh, Marilla, thank you.” Anne flung her arms about Marilla’s waist and
looked up earnestly into her face. “I’m extremely grateful to you and
Matthew. And I’ll study as hard as I can and do my very best to be a
credit to you. I warn you not to expect much in geometry, but I think I
can hold my own in anything else if I work hard.”

“I dare say you’ll get along well enough. Miss Stacy says you are bright
and diligent.” Not for worlds would Marilla have told Anne just what
Miss Stacy had said about her; that would have been to pamper vanity.
“You needn’t rush to any extreme of killing yourself over your books.
There is no hurry. You won’t be ready to try the Entrance for a year and
a half yet. But it’s well to begin in time and be thoroughly grounded,
Miss Stacy says.”

“I shall take more interest than ever in my studies now,” said Anne
blissfully, “because I have a purpose in life. Mr. Allan says everybody
should have a purpose in life and pursue it faithfully. Only he says
we must first make sure that it is a worthy purpose. I would call it a
worthy purpose to want to be a teacher like Miss Stacy, wouldn’t you,
Marilla? I think it’s a very noble profession.”

The Queen’s class was organized in due time. Gilbert Blythe, Anne
Shirley, Ruby Gillis, Jane Andrews, Josie Pye, Charlie Sloane, and Moody
Spurgeon MacPherson joined it. Diana Barry did not, as her parents
did not intend to send her to Queen’s. This seemed nothing short of a
calamity to Anne. Never, since the night on which Minnie May had had the
croup, had she and Diana been separated in anything. On the evening when
the Queen’s class first remained in school for the extra lessons and
Anne saw Diana go slowly out with the others, to walk home alone through
the Birch Path and Violet Vale, it was all the former could do to keep
her seat and refrain from rushing impulsively after her chum. A lump
came into her throat, and she hastily retired behind the pages of her
uplifted Latin grammar to hide the tears in her eyes. Not for worlds
would Anne have had Gilbert Blythe or Josie Pye see those tears.

“But, oh, Marilla, I really felt that I had tasted the bitterness of
death, as Mr. Allan said in his sermon last Sunday, when I saw Diana go
out alone,” she said mournfully that night. “I thought how splendid it
would have been if Diana had only been going to study for the Entrance,
too. But we can’t have things perfect in this imperfect world, as Mrs.
Lynde says. Mrs. Lynde isn’t exactly a comforting person sometimes, but
there’s no doubt she says a great many very true things. And I think the
Queen’s class is going to be extremely interesting. Jane and Ruby
are just going to study to be teachers. That is the height of their
ambition. Ruby says she will only teach for two years after she gets
through, and then she intends to be married. Jane says she will devote
her whole life to teaching, and never, never marry, because you are paid
a salary for teaching, but a husband won’t pay you anything, and growls
if you ask for a share in the egg and butter money. I expect Jane speaks
from mournful experience, for Mrs. Lynde says that her father is a
perfect old crank, and meaner than second skimmings. Josie Pye says she
is just going to college for education’s sake, because she won’t have to
earn her own living; she says of course it is different with orphans who
are living on charity--_they_ have to hustle. Moody Spurgeon is going to
be a minister. Mrs. Lynde says he couldn’t be anything else with a name
like that to live up to. I hope it isn’t wicked of me, Marilla, but
really the thought of Moody Spurgeon being a minister makes me laugh.
He’s such a funny-looking boy with that big fat face, and his little
blue eyes, and his ears sticking out like flaps. But perhaps he will
be more intellectual looking when he grows up. Charlie Sloane says he’s
going to go into politics and be a member of Parliament, but Mrs. Lynde
says he’ll never succeed at that, because the Sloanes are all honest
people, and it’s only rascals that get on in politics nowadays.”

“What is Gilbert Blythe going to be?” queried Marilla, seeing that Anne
was opening her Caesar.

“I don’t happen to know what Gilbert Blythe’s ambition in life is--if he
has any,” said Anne scornfully.

There was open rivalry between Gilbert and Anne now. Previously the
rivalry had been rather one-sided, but there was no longer any doubt
that Gilbert was as determined to be first in class as Anne was. He was
a foeman worthy of her steel. The other members of the class tacitly
acknowledged their superiority, and never dreamed of trying to compete
with them.

Since the day by the pond when she had refused to listen to his plea
for forgiveness, Gilbert, save for the aforesaid determined rivalry,
had evinced no recognition whatever of the existence of Anne Shirley. He
talked and jested with the other girls, exchanged books and puzzles with
them, discussed lessons and plans, sometimes walked home with one or the
other of them from prayer meeting or Debating Club. But Anne Shirley
he simply ignored, and Anne found out that it is not pleasant to be
ignored. It was in vain that she told herself with a toss of her head
that she did not care. Deep down in her wayward, feminine little heart
she knew that she did care, and that if she had that chance of the Lake
of Shining Waters again she would answer very differently. All at
once, as it seemed, and to her secret dismay, she found that the old
resentment she had cherished against him was gone--gone just when she
most needed its sustaining power. It was in vain that she recalled every
incident and emotion of that memorable occasion and tried to feel
the old satisfying anger. That day by the pond had witnessed its last
spasmodic flicker. Anne realized that she had forgiven and forgotten
without knowing it. But it was too late.

And at least neither Gilbert nor anybody else, not even Diana, should
ever suspect how sorry she was and how much she wished she hadn’t been
so proud and horrid! She determined to “shroud her feelings in deepest
oblivion,” and it may be stated here and now that she did it, so
successfully that Gilbert, who possibly was not quite so indifferent as
he seemed, could not console himself with any belief that Anne felt his
retaliatory scorn. The only poor comfort he had was that she snubbed
Charlie Sloane, unmercifully, continually, and undeservedly.

Otherwise the winter passed away in a round of pleasant duties and
studies. For Anne the days slipped by like golden beads on the necklace
of the year. She was happy, eager, interested; there were lessons to be
learned and honor to be won; delightful books to read; new pieces to be
practiced for the Sunday-school choir; pleasant Saturday afternoons at
the manse with Mrs. Allan; and then, almost before Anne realized it,
spring had come again to Green Gables and all the world was abloom once
more.

Studies palled just a wee bit then; the Queen’s class, left behind in
school while the others scattered to green lanes and leafy wood cuts and
meadow byways, looked wistfully out of the windows and discovered that
Latin verbs and French exercises had somehow lost the tang and zest they
had possessed in the crisp winter months. Even Anne and Gilbert lagged
and grew indifferent. Teacher and taught were alike glad when the term
was ended and the glad vacation days stretched rosily before them.

“But you’ve done good work this past year,” Miss Stacy told them on the
last evening, “and you deserve a good, jolly vacation. Have the best
time you can in the out-of-door world and lay in a good stock of health
and vitality and ambition to carry you through next year. It will be the
tug of war, you know--the last year before the Entrance.”

“Are you going to be back next year, Miss Stacy?” asked Josie Pye.

Josie Pye never scrupled to ask questions; in this instance the rest of
the class felt grateful to her; none of them would have dared to ask
it of Miss Stacy, but all wanted to, for there had been alarming rumors
running at large through the school for some time that Miss Stacy was
not coming back the next year--that she had been offered a position
in the grade school of her own home district and meant to accept. The
Queen’s class listened in breathless suspense for her answer.

“Yes, I think I will,” said Miss Stacy. “I thought of taking another
school, but I have decided to come back to Avonlea. To tell the truth,
I’ve grown so interested in my pupils here that I found I couldn’t leave
them. So I’ll stay and see you through.”

“Hurrah!” said Moody Spurgeon. Moody Spurgeon had never been so carried
away by his feelings before, and he blushed uncomfortably every time he
thought about it for a week.

“Oh, I’m so glad,” said Anne, with shining eyes. “Dear Stacy, it would
be perfectly dreadful if you didn’t come back. I don’t believe I could
have the heart to go on with my studies at all if another teacher came
here.”

When Anne got home that night she stacked all her textbooks away in an
old trunk in the attic, locked it, and threw the key into the blanket
box.

“I’m not even going to look at a schoolbook in vacation,” she told
Marilla. “I’ve studied as hard all the term as I possibly could and I’ve
pored over that geometry until I know every proposition in the first
book off by heart, even when the letters _are_ changed. I just feel tired
of everything sensible and I’m going to let my imagination run riot for
the summer. Oh, you needn’t be alarmed, Marilla. I’ll only let it run
riot within reasonable limits. But I want to have a real good jolly time
this summer, for maybe it’s the last summer I’ll be a little girl. Mrs.
Lynde says that if I keep stretching out next year as I’ve done this
I’ll have to put on longer skirts. She says I’m all running to legs and
eyes. And when I put on longer skirts I shall feel that I have to live
up to them and be very dignified. It won’t even do to believe in fairies
then, I’m afraid; so I’m going to believe in them with all my whole
heart this summer. I think we’re going to have a very gay vacation. Ruby
Gillis is going to have a birthday party soon and there’s the Sunday
school picnic and the missionary concert next month. And Mr. Barry says
that some evening he’ll take Diana and me over to the White Sands Hotel
and have dinner there. They have dinner there in the evening, you know.
Jane Andrews was over once last summer and she says it was a dazzling
sight to see the electric lights and the flowers and all the lady guests
in such beautiful dresses. Jane says it was her first glimpse into high
life and she’ll never forget it to her dying day.”

Mrs. Lynde came up the next afternoon to find out why Marilla had not
been at the Aid meeting on Thursday. When Marilla was not at Aid meeting
people knew there was something wrong at Green Gables.

“Matthew had a bad spell with his heart Thursday,” Marilla explained,
“and I didn’t feel like leaving him. Oh, yes, he’s all right again now,
but he takes them spells oftener than he used to and I’m anxious about
him. The doctor says he must be careful to avoid excitement. That’s easy
enough, for Matthew doesn’t go about looking for excitement by any means
and never did, but he’s not to do any very heavy work either and you
might as well tell Matthew not to breathe as not to work. Come and lay
off your things, Rachel. You’ll stay to tea?”

“Well, seeing you’re so pressing, perhaps I might as well, stay” said
Mrs. Rachel, who had not the slightest intention of doing anything else.

Mrs. Rachel and Marilla sat comfortably in the parlor while Anne got the
tea and made hot biscuits that were light and white enough to defy even
Mrs. Rachel’s criticism.

“I must say Anne has turned out a real smart girl,” admitted Mrs.
Rachel, as Marilla accompanied her to the end of the lane at sunset.
“She must be a great help to you.”

“She is,” said Marilla, “and she’s real steady and reliable now. I used
to be afraid she’d never get over her featherbrained ways, but she has
and I wouldn’t be afraid to trust her in anything now.”

“I never would have thought she’d have turned out so well that first day
I was here three years ago,” said Mrs. Rachel. “Lawful heart, shall I
ever forget that tantrum of hers! When I went home that night I says to
Thomas, says I, ‘Mark my words, Thomas, Marilla Cuthbert ‘ll live to
rue the step she’s took.’ But I was mistaken and I’m real glad of it. I
ain’t one of those kind of people, Marilla, as can never be brought to
own up that they’ve made a mistake. No, that never was my way, thank
goodness. I did make a mistake in judging Anne, but it weren’t no
wonder, for an odder, unexpecteder witch of a child there never was in
this world, that’s what. There was no ciphering her out by the rules
that worked with other children. It’s nothing short of wonderful how
she’s improved these three years, but especially in looks. She’s a real
pretty girl got to be, though I can’t say I’m overly partial to that
pale, big-eyed style myself. I like more snap and color, like Diana
Barry has or Ruby Gillis. Ruby Gillis’s looks are real showy. But
somehow--I don’t know how it is but when Anne and them are together,
though she ain’t half as handsome, she makes them look kind of common
and overdone--something like them white June lilies she calls narcissus
alongside of the big, red peonies, that’s what.”


CHAPTER XXXI. Where the Brook and River Meet


|ANNE had her “good” summer and enjoyed it wholeheartedly. She and Diana
fairly lived outdoors, reveling in all the delights that Lover’s Lane
and the Dryad’s Bubble and Willowmere and Victoria Island afforded.
Marilla offered no objections to Anne’s gypsyings. The Spencervale
doctor who had come the night Minnie May had the croup met Anne at the
house of a patient one afternoon early in vacation, looked her over
sharply, screwed up his mouth, shook his head, and sent a message to
Marilla Cuthbert by another person. It was:

“Keep that redheaded girl of yours in the open air all summer and don’t
let her read books until she gets more spring into her step.”

This message frightened Marilla wholesomely. She read Anne’s death
warrant by consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed. As a
result, Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and
frolic went. She walked, rowed, berried, and dreamed to her heart’s
content; and when September came she was bright-eyed and alert, with a
step that would have satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full
of ambition and zest once more.

“I feel just like studying with might and main,” she declared as she
brought her books down from the attic. “Oh, you good old friends, I’m
glad to see your honest faces once more--yes, even you, geometry. I’ve
had a perfectly beautiful summer, Marilla, and now I’m rejoicing as a
strong man to run a race, as Mr. Allan said last Sunday. Doesn’t Mr.
Allan preach magnificent sermons? Mrs. Lynde says he is improving every
day and the first thing we know some city church will gobble him up
and then we’ll be left and have to turn to and break in another green
preacher. But I don’t see the use of meeting trouble halfway, do you,
Marilla? I think it would be better just to enjoy Mr. Allan while we
have him. If I were a man I think I’d be a minister. They can have
such an influence for good, if their theology is sound; and it must be
thrilling to preach splendid sermons and stir your hearers’ hearts. Why
can’t women be ministers, Marilla? I asked Mrs. Lynde that and she was
shocked and said it would be a scandalous thing. She said there might
be female ministers in the States and she believed there was, but thank
goodness we hadn’t got to that stage in Canada yet and she hoped we
never would. But I don’t see why. I think women would make splendid
ministers. When there is a social to be got up or a church tea or
anything else to raise money the women have to turn to and do the work.
I’m sure Mrs. Lynde can pray every bit as well as Superintendent Bell
and I’ve no doubt she could preach too with a little practice.”

“Yes, I believe she could,” said Marilla dryly. “She does plenty of
unofficial preaching as it is. Nobody has much of a chance to go wrong
in Avonlea with Rachel to oversee them.”

“Marilla,” said Anne in a burst of confidence, “I want to tell you
something and ask you what you think about it. It has worried me
terribly--on Sunday afternoons, that is, when I think specially about
such matters. I do really want to be good; and when I’m with you or Mrs.
Allan or Miss Stacy I want it more than ever and I want to do just what
would please you and what you would approve of. But mostly when I’m with
Mrs. Lynde I feel desperately wicked and as if I wanted to go and do the
very thing she tells me I oughtn’t to do. I feel irresistibly tempted
to do it. Now, what do you think is the reason I feel like that? Do you
think it’s because I’m really bad and unregenerate?”

Marilla looked dubious for a moment. Then she laughed.

“If you are I guess I am too, Anne, for Rachel often has that very
effect on me. I sometimes think she’d have more of an influence for
good, as you say yourself, if she didn’t keep nagging people to do
right. There should have been a special commandment against nagging.
But there, I shouldn’t talk so. Rachel is a good Christian woman and she
means well. There isn’t a kinder soul in Avonlea and she never shirks
her share of work.”

“I’m very glad you feel the same,” said Anne decidedly. “It’s so
encouraging. I shan’t worry so much over that after this. But I dare say
there’ll be other things to worry me. They keep coming up new all the
time--things to perplex you, you know. You settle one question and
there’s another right after. There are so many things to be thought over
and decided when you’re beginning to grow up. It keeps me busy all the
time thinking them over and deciding what is right. It’s a serious thing
to grow up, isn’t it, Marilla? But when I have such good friends as
you and Matthew and Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy I ought to grow up
successfully, and I’m sure it will be my own fault if I don’t. I feel
it’s a great responsibility because I have only the one chance. If I
don’t grow up right I can’t go back and begin over again. I’ve grown two
inches this summer, Marilla. Mr. Gillis measured me at Ruby’s party. I’m
so glad you made my new dresses longer. That dark-green one is so pretty
and it was sweet of you to put on the flounce. Of course I know it
wasn’t really necessary, but flounces are so stylish this fall and Josie
Pye has flounces on all her dresses. I know I’ll be able to study better
because of mine. I shall have such a comfortable feeling deep down in my
mind about that flounce.”

“It’s worth something to have that,” admitted Marilla.

Miss Stacy came back to Avonlea school and found all her pupils eager
for work once more. Especially did the Queen’s class gird up their loins
for the fray, for at the end of the coming year, dimly shadowing their
pathway already, loomed up that fateful thing known as “the Entrance,”
 at the thought of which one and all felt their hearts sink into their
very shoes. Suppose they did not pass! That thought was doomed to
haunt Anne through the waking hours of that winter, Sunday afternoons
inclusive, to the almost entire exclusion of moral and theological
problems. When Anne had bad dreams she found herself staring miserably
at pass lists of the Entrance exams, where Gilbert Blythe’s name was
blazoned at the top and in which hers did not appear at all.

But it was a jolly, busy, happy swift-flying winter. Schoolwork was
as interesting, class rivalry as absorbing, as of yore. New worlds of
thought, feeling, and ambition, fresh, fascinating fields of unexplored
knowledge seemed to be opening out before Anne’s eager eyes.


      “Hills peeped o’er hill and Alps on Alps arose.”


Much of all this was due to Miss Stacy’s tactful, careful, broadminded
guidance. She led her class to think and explore and discover for
themselves and encouraged straying from the old beaten paths to a degree
that quite shocked Mrs. Lynde and the school trustees, who viewed all
innovations on established methods rather dubiously.

Apart from her studies Anne expanded socially, for Marilla, mindful of
the Spencervale doctor’s dictum, no longer vetoed occasional outings.
The Debating Club flourished and gave several concerts; there were one
or two parties almost verging on grown-up affairs; there were sleigh
drives and skating frolics galore.

Between times Anne grew, shooting up so rapidly that Marilla was
astonished one day, when they were standing side by side, to find the
girl was taller than herself.

“Why, Anne, how you’ve grown!” she said, almost unbelievingly. A sigh
followed on the words. Marilla felt a queer regret over Anne’s inches.
The child she had learned to love had vanished somehow and here was this
tall, serious-eyed girl of fifteen, with the thoughtful brows and the
proudly poised little head, in her place. Marilla loved the girl as much
as she had loved the child, but she was conscious of a queer sorrowful
sense of loss. And that night, when Anne had gone to prayer meeting
with Diana, Marilla sat alone in the wintry twilight and indulged in the
weakness of a cry. Matthew, coming in with a lantern, caught her at it
and gazed at her in such consternation that Marilla had to laugh through
her tears.

“I was thinking about Anne,” she explained. “She’s got to be such a big
girl--and she’ll probably be away from us next winter. I’ll miss her
terrible.”

“She’ll be able to come home often,” comforted Matthew, to whom Anne was
as yet and always would be the little, eager girl he had brought home
from Bright River on that June evening four years before. “The branch
railroad will be built to Carmody by that time.”

“It won’t be the same thing as having her here all the time,” sighed
Marilla gloomily, determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted.
“But there--men can’t understand these things!”

There were other changes in Anne no less real than the physical change.
For one thing, she became much quieter. Perhaps she thought all the
more and dreamed as much as ever, but she certainly talked less. Marilla
noticed and commented on this also.

“You don’t chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use half as
many big words. What has come over you?”

Anne colored and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked
dreamily out of the window, where big fat red buds were bursting out on
the creeper in response to the lure of the spring sunshine.

“I don’t know--I don’t want to talk as much,” she said, denting her
chin thoughtfully with her forefinger. “It’s nicer to think dear, pretty
thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures. I don’t like to
have them laughed at or wondered over. And somehow I don’t want to use
big words any more. It’s almost a pity, isn’t it, now that I’m really
growing big enough to say them if I did want to. It’s fun to be almost
grown up in some ways, but it’s not the kind of fun I expected, Marilla.
There’s so much to learn and do and think that there isn’t time for big
words. Besides, Miss Stacy says the short ones are much stronger and
better. She makes us write all our essays as simply as possible. It was
hard at first. I was so used to crowding in all the fine big words I
could think of--and I thought of any number of them. But I’ve got used
to it now and I see it’s so much better.”

“What has become of your story club? I haven’t heard you speak of it for
a long time.”

“The story club isn’t in existence any longer. We hadn’t time for
it--and anyhow I think we had got tired of it. It was silly to be
writing about love and murder and elopements and mysteries. Miss Stacy
sometimes has us write a story for training in composition, but she
won’t let us write anything but what might happen in Avonlea in our own
lives, and she criticizes it very sharply and makes us criticize our own
too. I never thought my compositions had so many faults until I began to
look for them myself. I felt so ashamed I wanted to give up altogether,
but Miss Stacy said I could learn to write well if I only trained myself
to be my own severest critic. And so I am trying to.”

“You’ve only two more months before the Entrance,” said Marilla. “Do you
think you’ll be able to get through?”

Anne shivered.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’ll be all right--and then I get
horribly afraid. We’ve studied hard and Miss Stacy has drilled us
thoroughly, but we mayn’t get through for all that. We’ve each got a
stumbling block. Mine is geometry of course, and Jane’s is Latin, and
Ruby and Charlie’s is algebra, and Josie’s is arithmetic. Moody Spurgeon
says he feels it in his bones that he is going to fail in English
history. Miss Stacy is going to give us examinations in June just as
hard as we’ll have at the Entrance and mark us just as strictly, so
we’ll have some idea. I wish it was all over, Marilla. It haunts me.
Sometimes I wake up in the night and wonder what I’ll do if I don’t
pass.”

“Why, go to school next year and try again,” said Marilla unconcernedly.

“Oh, I don’t believe I’d have the heart for it. It would be such a
disgrace to fail, especially if Gil--if the others passed. And I get so
nervous in an examination that I’m likely to make a mess of it. I wish I
had nerves like Jane Andrews. Nothing rattles her.”

Anne sighed and, dragging her eyes from the witcheries of the spring
world, the beckoning day of breeze and blue, and the green things
upspringing in the garden, buried herself resolutely in her book.
There would be other springs, but if she did not succeed in passing the
Entrance, Anne felt convinced that she would never recover sufficiently
to enjoy them.


CHAPTER XXXII. The Pass List Is Out


|WITH the end of June came the close of the term and the close of Miss
Stacy’s rule in Avonlea school. Anne and Diana walked home that
evening feeling very sober indeed. Red eyes and damp handkerchiefs bore
convincing testimony to the fact that Miss Stacy’s farewell words must
have been quite as touching as Mr. Phillips’s had been under similar
circumstances three years before. Diana looked back at the schoolhouse
from the foot of the spruce hill and sighed deeply.

“It does seem as if it was the end of everything, doesn’t it?” she said
dismally.

“You oughtn’t to feel half as badly as I do,” said Anne, hunting vainly
for a dry spot on her handkerchief. “You’ll be back again next winter,
but I suppose I’ve left the dear old school forever--if I have good
luck, that is.”

“It won’t be a bit the same. Miss Stacy won’t be there, nor you nor Jane
nor Ruby probably. I shall have to sit all alone, for I couldn’t bear
to have another deskmate after you. Oh, we have had jolly times, haven’t
we, Anne? It’s dreadful to think they’re all over.”

Two big tears rolled down by Diana’s nose.

“If you would stop crying I could,” said Anne imploringly. “Just as
soon as I put away my hanky I see you brimming up and that starts me off
again. As Mrs. Lynde says, ‘If you can’t be cheerful, be as cheerful as
you can.’ After all, I dare say I’ll be back next year. This is one
of the times I _know_ I’m not going to pass. They’re getting alarmingly
frequent.”

“Why, you came out splendidly in the exams Miss Stacy gave.”

“Yes, but those exams didn’t make me nervous. When I think of the real
thing you can’t imagine what a horrid cold fluttery feeling comes round
my heart. And then my number is thirteen and Josie Pye says it’s so
unlucky. I am _not_ superstitious and I know it can make no difference.
But still I wish it wasn’t thirteen.”

“I do wish I was going in with you,” said Diana. “Wouldn’t we have
a perfectly elegant time? But I suppose you’ll have to cram in the
evenings.”

“No; Miss Stacy has made us promise not to open a book at all. She says
it would only tire and confuse us and we are to go out walking and not
think about the exams at all and go to bed early. It’s good advice, but
I expect it will be hard to follow; good advice is apt to be, I think.
Prissy Andrews told me that she sat up half the night every night of her
Entrance week and crammed for dear life; and I had determined to sit up
_at least_ as long as she did. It was so kind of your Aunt Josephine to
ask me to stay at Beechwood while I’m in town.”

“You’ll write to me while you’re in, won’t you?”

“I’ll write Tuesday night and tell you how the first day goes,” promised
Anne.

“I’ll be haunting the post office Wednesday,” vowed Diana.

Anne went to town the following Monday and on Wednesday Diana haunted
the post office, as agreed, and got her letter.


“Dearest Diana” [wrote Anne],

“Here it is Tuesday night and I’m writing this in the library at
Beechwood. Last night I was horribly lonesome all alone in my room and
wished so much you were with me. I couldn’t ‘cram’ because I’d promised
Miss Stacy not to, but it was as hard to keep from opening my history
as it used to be to keep from reading a story before my lessons were
learned.

“This morning Miss Stacy came for me and we went to the Academy, calling
for Jane and Ruby and Josie on our way. Ruby asked me to feel her hands
and they were as cold as ice. Josie said I looked as if I hadn’t slept
a wink and she didn’t believe I was strong enough to stand the grind
of the teacher’s course even if I did get through. There are times and
seasons even yet when I don’t feel that I’ve made any great headway in
learning to like Josie Pye!

“When we reached the Academy there were scores of students there from
all over the Island. The first person we saw was Moody Spurgeon sitting
on the steps and muttering away to himself. Jane asked him what on earth
he was doing and he said he was repeating the multiplication table over
and over to steady his nerves and for pity’s sake not to interrupt
him, because if he stopped for a moment he got frightened and forgot
everything he ever knew, but the multiplication table kept all his facts
firmly in their proper place!

“When we were assigned to our rooms Miss Stacy had to leave us. Jane and
I sat together and Jane was so composed that I envied her. No need of
the multiplication table for good, steady, sensible Jane! I wondered if
I looked as I felt and if they could hear my heart thumping clear
across the room. Then a man came in and began distributing the English
examination sheets. My hands grew cold then and my head fairly whirled
around as I picked it up. Just one awful moment--Diana, I felt exactly
as I did four years ago when I asked Marilla if I might stay at Green
Gables--and then everything cleared up in my mind and my heart began
beating again--I forgot to say that it had stopped altogether!--for I
knew I could do something with _that_ paper anyhow.

“At noon we went home for dinner and then back again for history in
the afternoon. The history was a pretty hard paper and I got dreadfully
mixed up in the dates. Still, I think I did fairly well today. But oh,
Diana, tomorrow the geometry exam comes off and when I think of it
it takes every bit of determination I possess to keep from opening my
Euclid. If I thought the multiplication table would help me any I would
recite it from now till tomorrow morning.

“I went down to see the other girls this evening. On my way I met Moody
Spurgeon wandering distractedly around. He said he knew he had failed in
history and he was born to be a disappointment to his parents and he
was going home on the morning train; and it would be easier to be a
carpenter than a minister, anyhow. I cheered him up and persuaded him to
stay to the end because it would be unfair to Miss Stacy if he didn’t.
Sometimes I have wished I was born a boy, but when I see Moody Spurgeon
I’m always glad I’m a girl and not his sister.

“Ruby was in hysterics when I reached their boardinghouse; she had just
discovered a fearful mistake she had made in her English paper. When
she recovered we went uptown and had an ice cream. How we wished you had
been with us.

“Oh, Diana, if only the geometry examination were over! But there, as
Mrs. Lynde would say, the sun will go on rising and setting whether I
fail in geometry or not. That is true but not especially comforting. I
think I’d rather it didn’t go on if I failed!

“Yours devotedly,

“Anne”


The geometry examination and all the others were over in due time and
Anne arrived home on Friday evening, rather tired but with an air of
chastened triumph about her. Diana was over at Green Gables when she
arrived and they met as if they had been parted for years.

“You old darling, it’s perfectly splendid to see you back again. It
seems like an age since you went to town and oh, Anne, how did you get
along?”

“Pretty well, I think, in everything but the geometry. I don’t know
whether I passed in it or not and I have a creepy, crawly presentiment
that I didn’t. Oh, how good it is to be back! Green Gables is the
dearest, loveliest spot in the world.”

“How did the others do?”

“The girls say they know they didn’t pass, but I think they did pretty
well. Josie says the geometry was so easy a child of ten could do it!
Moody Spurgeon still thinks he failed in history and Charlie says he
failed in algebra. But we don’t really know anything about it and won’t
until the pass list is out. That won’t be for a fortnight. Fancy living
a fortnight in such suspense! I wish I could go to sleep and never wake
up until it is over.”

Diana knew it would be useless to ask how Gilbert Blythe had fared, so
she merely said:

“Oh, you’ll pass all right. Don’t worry.”

“I’d rather not pass at all than not come out pretty well up on the
list,” flashed Anne, by which she meant--and Diana knew she meant--that
success would be incomplete and bitter if she did not come out ahead of
Gilbert Blythe.

With this end in view Anne had strained every nerve during the
examinations. So had Gilbert. They had met and passed each other on the
street a dozen times without any sign of recognition and every time Anne
had held her head a little higher and wished a little more earnestly
that she had made friends with Gilbert when he asked her, and vowed a
little more determinedly to surpass him in the examination. She knew
that all Avonlea junior was wondering which would come out first; she
even knew that Jimmy Glover and Ned Wright had a bet on the question
and that Josie Pye had said there was no doubt in the world that Gilbert
would be first; and she felt that her humiliation would be unbearable if
she failed.

But she had another and nobler motive for wishing to do well. She wanted
to “pass high” for the sake of Matthew and Marilla--especially Matthew.
Matthew had declared to her his conviction that she “would beat the
whole Island.” That, Anne felt, was something it would be foolish to
hope for even in the wildest dreams. But she did hope fervently that she
would be among the first ten at least, so that she might see Matthew’s
kindly brown eyes gleam with pride in her achievement. That, she
felt, would be a sweet reward indeed for all her hard work and patient
grubbing among unimaginative equations and conjugations.

At the end of the fortnight Anne took to “haunting” the post office
also, in the distracted company of Jane, Ruby, and Josie, opening the
Charlottetown dailies with shaking hands and cold, sinkaway feelings
as bad as any experienced during the Entrance week. Charlie and Gilbert
were not above doing this too, but Moody Spurgeon stayed resolutely
away.

“I haven’t got the grit to go there and look at a paper in cold blood,”
 he told Anne. “I’m just going to wait until somebody comes and tells me
suddenly whether I’ve passed or not.”

When three weeks had gone by without the pass list appearing Anne began
to feel that she really couldn’t stand the strain much longer. Her
appetite failed and her interest in Avonlea doings languished.
Mrs. Lynde wanted to know what else you could expect with a Tory
superintendent of education at the head of affairs, and Matthew, noting
Anne’s paleness and indifference and the lagging steps that bore her
home from the post office every afternoon, began seriously to wonder if
he hadn’t better vote Grit at the next election.

But one evening the news came. Anne was sitting at her open window,
for the time forgetful of the woes of examinations and the cares of the
world, as she drank in the beauty of the summer dusk, sweet-scented with
flower breaths from the garden below and sibilant and rustling from the
stir of poplars. The eastern sky above the firs was flushed faintly pink
from the reflection of the west, and Anne was wondering dreamily if the
spirit of color looked like that, when she saw Diana come flying
down through the firs, over the log bridge, and up the slope, with a
fluttering newspaper in her hand.

Anne sprang to her feet, knowing at once what that paper contained. The
pass list was out! Her head whirled and her heart beat until it hurt
her. She could not move a step. It seemed an hour to her before Diana
came rushing along the hall and burst into the room without even
knocking, so great was her excitement.

“Anne, you’ve passed,” she cried, “passed the _very first_--you and
Gilbert both--you’re ties--but your name is first. Oh, I’m so proud!”

Diana flung the paper on the table and herself on Anne’s bed, utterly
breathless and incapable of further speech. Anne lighted the lamp,
oversetting the match safe and using up half a dozen matches before her
shaking hands could accomplish the task. Then she snatched up the paper.
Yes, she had passed--there was her name at the very top of a list of two
hundred! That moment was worth living for.

“You did just splendidly, Anne,” puffed Diana, recovering sufficiently
to sit up and speak, for Anne, starry eyed and rapt, had not uttered a
word. “Father brought the paper home from Bright River not ten minutes
ago--it came out on the afternoon train, you know, and won’t be here
till tomorrow by mail--and when I saw the pass list I just rushed over
like a wild thing. You’ve all passed, every one of you, Moody Spurgeon
and all, although he’s conditioned in history. Jane and Ruby did pretty
well--they’re halfway up--and so did Charlie. Josie just scraped through
with three marks to spare, but you’ll see she’ll put on as many airs as
if she’d led. Won’t Miss Stacy be delighted? Oh, Anne, what does it feel
like to see your name at the head of a pass list like that? If it were
me I know I’d go crazy with joy. I am pretty near crazy as it is, but
you’re as calm and cool as a spring evening.”

“I’m just dazzled inside,” said Anne. “I want to say a hundred things,
and I can’t find words to say them in. I never dreamed of this--yes, I
did too, just once! I let myself think _once_, ‘What if I should come out
first?’ quakingly, you know, for it seemed so vain and presumptuous to
think I could lead the Island. Excuse me a minute, Diana. I must run
right out to the field to tell Matthew. Then we’ll go up the road and
tell the good news to the others.”

They hurried to the hayfield below the barn where Matthew was coiling
hay, and, as luck would have it, Mrs. Lynde was talking to Marilla at
the lane fence.

“Oh, Matthew,” exclaimed Anne, “I’ve passed and I’m first--or one of the
first! I’m not vain, but I’m thankful.”

“Well now, I always said it,” said Matthew, gazing at the pass list
delightedly. “I knew you could beat them all easy.”

“You’ve done pretty well, I must say, Anne,” said Marilla, trying to
hide her extreme pride in Anne from Mrs. Rachel’s critical eye. But that
good soul said heartily:

“I just guess she has done well, and far be it from me to be backward in
saying it. You’re a credit to your friends, Anne, that’s what, and we’re
all proud of you.”

That night Anne, who had wound up the delightful evening with a serious
little talk with Mrs. Allan at the manse, knelt sweetly by her open
window in a great sheen of moonshine and murmured a prayer of gratitude
and aspiration that came straight from her heart. There was in it
thankfulness for the past and reverent petition for the future; and when
she slept on her white pillow her dreams were as fair and bright and
beautiful as maidenhood might desire.


CHAPTER XXXIII. The Hotel Concert


|PUT on your white organdy, by all means, Anne,” advised Diana
decidedly.

They were together in the east gable chamber; outside it was only
twilight--a lovely yellowish-green twilight with a clear-blue cloudless
sky. A big round moon, slowly deepening from her pallid luster into
burnished silver, hung over the Haunted Wood; the air was full of sweet
summer sounds--sleepy birds twittering, freakish breezes, faraway
voices and laughter. But in Anne’s room the blind was drawn and the lamp
lighted, for an important toilet was being made.

The east gable was a very different place from what it had been on that
night four years before, when Anne had felt its bareness penetrate to
the marrow of her spirit with its inhospitable chill. Changes had crept
in, Marilla conniving at them resignedly, until it was as sweet and
dainty a nest as a young girl could desire.

The velvet carpet with the pink roses and the pink silk curtains of
Anne’s early visions had certainly never materialized; but her dreams
had kept pace with her growth, and it is not probable she lamented
them. The floor was covered with a pretty matting, and the curtains that
softened the high window and fluttered in the vagrant breezes were of
pale-green art muslin. The walls, hung not with gold and silver brocade
tapestry, but with a dainty apple-blossom paper, were adorned with a few
good pictures given Anne by Mrs. Allan. Miss Stacy’s photograph occupied
the place of honor, and Anne made a sentimental point of keeping fresh
flowers on the bracket under it. Tonight a spike of white lilies faintly
perfumed the room like the dream of a fragrance. There was no “mahogany
furniture,” but there was a white-painted bookcase filled with books, a
cushioned wicker rocker, a toilet table befrilled with white muslin,
a quaint, gilt-framed mirror with chubby pink Cupids and purple grapes
painted over its arched top, that used to hang in the spare room, and a
low white bed.

Anne was dressing for a concert at the White Sands Hotel. The guests had
got it up in aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and had hunted out all
the available amateur talent in the surrounding districts to help it
along. Bertha Sampson and Pearl Clay of the White Sands Baptist choir
had been asked to sing a duet; Milton Clark of Newbridge was to give a
violin solo; Winnie Adella Blair of Carmody was to sing a Scotch ballad;
and Laura Spencer of Spencervale and Anne Shirley of Avonlea were to
recite.

As Anne would have said at one time, it was “an epoch in her life,” and
she was deliciously athrill with the excitement of it. Matthew was in
the seventh heaven of gratified pride over the honor conferred on his
Anne and Marilla was not far behind, although she would have died rather
than admit it, and said she didn’t think it was very proper for a lot
of young folks to be gadding over to the hotel without any responsible
person with them.

Anne and Diana were to drive over with Jane Andrews and her brother
Billy in their double-seated buggy; and several other Avonlea girls and
boys were going too. There was a party of visitors expected out from
town, and after the concert a supper was to be given to the performers.

“Do you really think the organdy will be best?” queried Anne anxiously.
“I don’t think it’s as pretty as my blue-flowered muslin--and it
certainly isn’t so fashionable.”

 “But it suits you ever so much better,” said Diana. “It’s so soft
and frilly and clinging. The muslin is stiff, and makes you look too
dressed up. But the organdy seems as if it grew on you.”

Anne sighed and yielded. Diana was beginning to have a reputation for
notable taste in dressing, and her advice on such subjects was much
sought after. She was looking very pretty herself on this particular
night in a dress of the lovely wild-rose pink, from which Anne was
forever debarred; but she was not to take any part in the concert, so
her appearance was of minor importance. All her pains were bestowed upon
Anne, who, she vowed, must, for the credit of Avonlea, be dressed and
combed and adorned to the Queen’s taste.

“Pull out that frill a little more--so; here, let me tie your sash; now
for your slippers. I’m going to braid your hair in two thick braids,
and tie them halfway up with big white bows--no, don’t pull out a single
curl over your forehead--just have the soft part. There is no way you do
your hair suits you so well, Anne, and Mrs. Allan says you look like a
Madonna when you part it so. I shall fasten this little white house rose
just behind your ear. There was just one on my bush, and I saved it for
you.”

“Shall I put my pearl beads on?” asked Anne. “Matthew brought me a
string from town last week, and I know he’d like to see them on me.”

Diana pursed up her lips, put her black head on one side critically,
and finally pronounced in favor of the beads, which were thereupon tied
around Anne’s slim milk-white throat.

“There’s something so stylish about you, Anne,” said Diana, with
unenvious admiration. “You hold your head with such an air. I suppose
it’s your figure. I am just a dumpling. I’ve always been afraid of it,
and now I know it is so. Well, I suppose I shall just have to resign
myself to it.”

“But you have such dimples,” said Anne, smiling affectionately into the
pretty, vivacious face so near her own. “Lovely dimples, like little
dents in cream. I have given up all hope of dimples. My dimple-dream
will never come true; but so many of my dreams have that I mustn’t
complain. Am I all ready now?”

“All ready,” assured Diana, as Marilla appeared in the doorway, a gaunt
figure with grayer hair than of yore and no fewer angles, but with a
much softer face. “Come right in and look at our elocutionist, Marilla.
Doesn’t she look lovely?”

Marilla emitted a sound between a sniff and a grunt.

“She looks neat and proper. I like that way of fixing her hair. But I
expect she’ll ruin that dress driving over there in the dust and dew
with it, and it looks most too thin for these damp nights. Organdy’s the
most unserviceable stuff in the world anyhow, and I told Matthew so when
he got it. But there is no use in saying anything to Matthew nowadays.
Time was when he would take my advice, but now he just buys things for
Anne regardless, and the clerks at Carmody know they can palm anything
off on him. Just let them tell him a thing is pretty and fashionable,
and Matthew plunks his money down for it. Mind you keep your skirt clear
of the wheel, Anne, and put your warm jacket on.”

Then Marilla stalked downstairs, thinking proudly how sweet Anne looked,
with that

     “One moonbeam from the forehead to the crown”

and regretting that she could not go to the concert herself to hear her
girl recite.

“I wonder if it _is_ too damp for my dress,” said Anne anxiously.

“Not a bit of it,” said Diana, pulling up the window blind. “It’s a
perfect night, and there won’t be any dew. Look at the moonlight.”

“I’m so glad my window looks east into the sun rising,” said Anne, going
over to Diana. “It’s so splendid to see the morning coming up over those
long hills and glowing through those sharp fir tops. It’s new every
morning, and I feel as if I washed my very soul in that bath of earliest
sunshine. Oh, Diana, I love this little room so dearly. I don’t know how
I’ll get along without it when I go to town next month.”

“Don’t speak of your going away tonight,” begged Diana. “I don’t want to
think of it, it makes me so miserable, and I do want to have a good time
this evening. What are you going to recite, Anne? And are you nervous?”

“Not a bit. I’ve recited so often in public I don’t mind at all now.
I’ve decided to give ‘The Maiden’s Vow.’ It’s so pathetic. Laura Spencer
is going to give a comic recitation, but I’d rather make people cry than
laugh.”

“What will you recite if they encore you?”

“They won’t dream of encoring me,” scoffed Anne, who was not without her
own secret hopes that they would, and already visioned herself telling
Matthew all about it at the next morning’s breakfast table. “There are
Billy and Jane now--I hear the wheels. Come on.”

Billy Andrews insisted that Anne should ride on the front seat with him,
so she unwillingly climbed up. She would have much preferred to sit
back with the girls, where she could have laughed and chattered to her
heart’s content. There was not much of either laughter or chatter
in Billy. He was a big, fat, stolid youth of twenty, with a round,
expressionless face, and a painful lack of conversational gifts. But he
admired Anne immensely, and was puffed up with pride over the prospect
of driving to White Sands with that slim, upright figure beside him.

Anne, by dint of talking over her shoulder to the girls and occasionally
passing a sop of civility to Billy--who grinned and chuckled and never
could think of any reply until it was too late--contrived to enjoy the
drive in spite of all. It was a night for enjoyment. The road was full
of buggies, all bound for the hotel, and laughter, silver clear, echoed
and reechoed along it. When they reached the hotel it was a blaze of
light from top to bottom. They were met by the ladies of the concert
committee, one of whom took Anne off to the performers’ dressing room
which was filled with the members of a Charlottetown Symphony Club,
among whom Anne felt suddenly shy and frightened and countrified. Her
dress, which, in the east gable, had seemed so dainty and pretty, now
seemed simple and plain--too simple and plain, she thought, among all
the silks and laces that glistened and rustled around her. What were her
pearl beads compared to the diamonds of the big, handsome lady near her?
And how poor her one wee white rose must look beside all the hothouse
flowers the others wore! Anne laid her hat and jacket away, and shrank
miserably into a corner. She wished herself back in the white room at
Green Gables.

It was still worse on the platform of the big concert hall of the hotel,
where she presently found herself. The electric lights dazzled her eyes,
the perfume and hum bewildered her. She wished she were sitting down
in the audience with Diana and Jane, who seemed to be having a splendid
time away at the back. She was wedged in between a stout lady in pink
silk and a tall, scornful-looking girl in a white-lace dress. The stout
lady occasionally turned her head squarely around and surveyed Anne
through her eyeglasses until Anne, acutely sensitive of being so
scrutinized, felt that she must scream aloud; and the white-lace girl
kept talking audibly to her next neighbor about the “country bumpkins”
 and “rustic belles” in the audience, languidly anticipating “such fun”
 from the displays of local talent on the program. Anne believed that she
would hate that white-lace girl to the end of life.

Unfortunately for Anne, a professional elocutionist was staying at the
hotel and had consented to recite. She was a lithe, dark-eyed woman in a
wonderful gown of shimmering gray stuff like woven moonbeams, with gems
on her neck and in her dark hair. She had a marvelously flexible voice
and wonderful power of expression; the audience went wild over her
selection. Anne, forgetting all about herself and her troubles for the
time, listened with rapt and shining eyes; but when the recitation ended
she suddenly put her hands over her face. She could never get up and
recite after that--never. Had she ever thought she could recite? Oh, if
she were only back at Green Gables!

At this unpropitious moment her name was called. Somehow Anne--who did
not notice the rather guilty little start of surprise the white-lace
girl gave, and would not have understood the subtle compliment implied
therein if she had--got on her feet, and moved dizzily out to the front.
She was so pale that Diana and Jane, down in the audience, clasped each
other’s hands in nervous sympathy.

Anne was the victim of an overwhelming attack of stage fright. Often as
she had recited in public, she had never before faced such an audience
as this, and the sight of it paralyzed her energies completely.
Everything was so strange, so brilliant, so bewildering--the rows of
ladies in evening dress, the critical faces, the whole atmosphere of
wealth and culture about her. Very different this from the plain benches
at the Debating Club, filled with the homely, sympathetic faces of
friends and neighbors. These people, she thought, would be merciless
critics. Perhaps, like the white-lace girl, they anticipated amusement
from her “rustic” efforts. She felt hopelessly, helplessly ashamed and
miserable. Her knees trembled, her heart fluttered, a horrible faintness
came over her; not a word could she utter, and the next moment she would
have fled from the platform despite the humiliation which, she felt,
must ever after be her portion if she did so.

But suddenly, as her dilated, frightened eyes gazed out over the
audience, she saw Gilbert Blythe away at the back of the room, bending
forward with a smile on his face--a smile which seemed to Anne at once
triumphant and taunting. In reality it was nothing of the kind. Gilbert
was merely smiling with appreciation of the whole affair in general and
of the effect produced by Anne’s slender white form and spiritual face
against a background of palms in particular. Josie Pye, whom he had
driven over, sat beside him, and her face certainly was both triumphant
and taunting. But Anne did not see Josie, and would not have cared if
she had. She drew a long breath and flung her head up proudly, courage
and determination tingling over her like an electric shock. She _would
not_ fail before Gilbert Blythe--he should never be able to laugh at her,
never, never! Her fright and nervousness vanished; and she began her
recitation, her clear, sweet voice reaching to the farthest corner of
the room without a tremor or a break. Self-possession was fully restored
to her, and in the reaction from that horrible moment of powerlessness
she recited as she had never done before. When she finished there were
bursts of honest applause. Anne, stepping back to her seat, blushing
with shyness and delight, found her hand vigorously clasped and shaken
by the stout lady in pink silk.

“My dear, you did splendidly,” she puffed. “I’ve been crying like a
baby, actually I have. There, they’re encoring you--they’re bound to
have you back!”

“Oh, I can’t go,” said Anne confusedly. “But yet--I must, or Matthew
will be disappointed. He said they would encore me.”

“Then don’t disappoint Matthew,” said the pink lady, laughing.

Smiling, blushing, limpid eyed, Anne tripped back and gave a quaint,
funny little selection that captivated her audience still further. The
rest of the evening was quite a little triumph for her.

When the concert was over, the stout, pink lady--who was the wife of
an American millionaire--took her under her wing, and introduced her
to everybody; and everybody was very nice to her. The professional
elocutionist, Mrs. Evans, came and chatted with her, telling her that
she had a charming voice and “interpreted” her selections beautifully.
Even the white-lace girl paid her a languid little compliment. They had
supper in the big, beautifully decorated dining room; Diana and Jane
were invited to partake of this, also, since they had come with Anne,
but Billy was nowhere to be found, having decamped in mortal fear
of some such invitation. He was in waiting for them, with the team,
however, when it was all over, and the three girls came merrily out into
the calm, white moonshine radiance. Anne breathed deeply, and looked
into the clear sky beyond the dark boughs of the firs.

Oh, it was good to be out again in the purity and silence of the night!
How great and still and wonderful everything was, with the murmur of the
sea sounding through it and the darkling cliffs beyond like grim giants
guarding enchanted coasts.

“Hasn’t it been a perfectly splendid time?” sighed Jane, as they drove
away. “I just wish I was a rich American and could spend my summer at
a hotel and wear jewels and low-necked dresses and have ice cream and
chicken salad every blessed day. I’m sure it would be ever so much
more fun than teaching school. Anne, your recitation was simply great,
although I thought at first you were never going to begin. I think it
was better than Mrs. Evans’s.”

“Oh, no, don’t say things like that, Jane,” said Anne quickly, “because
it sounds silly. It couldn’t be better than Mrs. Evans’s, you know, for
she is a professional, and I’m only a schoolgirl, with a little knack
of reciting. I’m quite satisfied if the people just liked mine pretty
well.”

“I’ve a compliment for you, Anne,” said Diana. “At least I think it
must be a compliment because of the tone he said it in. Part of it
was anyhow. There was an American sitting behind Jane and me--such a
romantic-looking man, with coal-black hair and eyes. Josie Pye says he
is a distinguished artist, and that her mother’s cousin in Boston is
married to a man that used to go to school with him. Well, we heard
him say--didn’t we, Jane?--‘Who is that girl on the platform with the
splendid Titian hair? She has a face I should like to paint.’ There now,
Anne. But what does Titian hair mean?”

“Being interpreted it means plain red, I guess,” laughed Anne. “Titian
was a very famous artist who liked to paint red-haired women.”

“_Did_ you see all the diamonds those ladies wore?” sighed Jane. “They
were simply dazzling. Wouldn’t you just love to be rich, girls?”

“We _are_ rich,” said Anne staunchly. “Why, we have sixteen years to our
credit, and we’re happy as queens, and we’ve all got imaginations, more
or less. Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of
things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had
millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds. You wouldn’t change into any
of those women if you could. Would you want to be that white-lace girl
and wear a sour look all your life, as if you’d been born turning up
your nose at the world? Or the pink lady, kind and nice as she is, so
stout and short that you’d really no figure at all? Or even Mrs. Evans,
with that sad, sad look in her eyes? She must have been dreadfully
unhappy sometime to have such a look. You _know_ you wouldn’t, Jane
Andrews!”

“I _don’t_ know--exactly,” said Jane unconvinced. “I think diamonds would
comfort a person for a good deal.”

“Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by
diamonds all my life,” declared Anne. “I’m quite content to be Anne of
Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads. I know Matthew gave me as
much love with them as ever went with Madame the Pink Lady’s jewels.”


CHAPTER XXXIV. A Queen’s Girl


|THE next three weeks were busy ones at Green Gables, for Anne was
getting ready to go to Queen’s, and there was much sewing to be done,
and many things to be talked over and arranged. Anne’s outfit was
ample and pretty, for Matthew saw to that, and Marilla for once made
no objections whatever to anything he purchased or suggested. More--one
evening she went up to the east gable with her arms full of a delicate
pale green material.

“Anne, here’s something for a nice light dress for you. I don’t suppose
you really need it; you’ve plenty of pretty waists; but I thought maybe
you’d like something real dressy to wear if you were asked out anywhere
of an evening in town, to a party or anything like that. I hear that
Jane and Ruby and Josie have got ‘evening dresses,’ as they call them,
and I don’t mean you shall be behind them. I got Mrs. Allan to help me
pick it in town last week, and we’ll get Emily Gillis to make it for
you. Emily has got taste, and her fits aren’t to be equaled.”

“Oh, Marilla, it’s just lovely,” said Anne. “Thank you so much. I don’t
believe you ought to be so kind to me--it’s making it harder every day
for me to go away.”

The green dress was made up with as many tucks and frills and shirrings
as Emily’s taste permitted. Anne put it on one evening for Matthew’s
and Marilla’s benefit, and recited “The Maiden’s Vow” for them in the
kitchen. As Marilla watched the bright, animated face and graceful
motions her thoughts went back to the evening Anne had arrived at Green
Gables, and memory recalled a vivid picture of the odd, frightened child
in her preposterous yellowish-brown wincey dress, the heartbreak looking
out of her tearful eyes. Something in the memory brought tears to
Marilla’s own eyes.

“I declare, my recitation has made you cry, Marilla,” said Anne gaily
stooping over Marilla’s chair to drop a butterfly kiss on that lady’s
cheek. “Now, I call that a positive triumph.”

“No, I wasn’t crying over your piece,” said Marilla, who would have
scorned to be betrayed into such weakness by any poetry stuff. “I just
couldn’t help thinking of the little girl you used to be, Anne. And
I was wishing you could have stayed a little girl, even with all your
queer ways. You’ve grown up now and you’re going away; and you look so
tall and stylish and so--so--different altogether in that dress--as if
you didn’t belong in Avonlea at all--and I just got lonesome thinking it
all over.”

“Marilla!” Anne sat down on Marilla’s gingham lap, took Marilla’s lined
face between her hands, and looked gravely and tenderly into Marilla’s
eyes. “I’m not a bit changed--not really. I’m only just pruned down and
branched out. The real _me_--back here--is just the same. It won’t make a
bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly; at heart I
shall always be your little Anne, who will love you and Matthew and dear
Green Gables more and better every day of her life.”

Anne laid her fresh young cheek against Marilla’s faded one, and reached
out a hand to pat Matthew’s shoulder. Marilla would have given much just
then to have possessed Anne’s power of putting her feelings into words;
but nature and habit had willed it otherwise, and she could only put her
arms close about her girl and hold her tenderly to her heart, wishing
that she need never let her go.

Matthew, with a suspicious moisture in his eyes, got up and went
out-of-doors. Under the stars of the blue summer night he walked
agitatedly across the yard to the gate under the poplars.

“Well now, I guess she ain’t been much spoiled,” he muttered, proudly.
“I guess my putting in my oar occasional never did much harm after all.
She’s smart and pretty, and loving, too, which is better than all the
rest. She’s been a blessing to us, and there never was a luckier mistake
than what Mrs. Spencer made--if it _was_ luck. I don’t believe it was any
such thing. It was Providence, because the Almighty saw we needed her, I
reckon.”

The day finally came when Anne must go to town. She and Matthew drove
in one fine September morning, after a tearful parting with Diana and an
untearful practical one--on Marilla’s side at least--with Marilla. But
when Anne had gone Diana dried her tears and went to a beach picnic at
White Sands with some of her Carmody cousins, where she contrived
to enjoy herself tolerably well; while Marilla plunged fiercely into
unnecessary work and kept at it all day long with the bitterest kind of
heartache--the ache that burns and gnaws and cannot wash itself away
in ready tears. But that night, when Marilla went to bed, acutely and
miserably conscious that the little gable room at the end of the
hall was untenanted by any vivid young life and unstirred by any soft
breathing, she buried her face in her pillow, and wept for her girl in
a passion of sobs that appalled her when she grew calm enough to reflect
how very wicked it must be to take on so about a sinful fellow creature.

Anne and the rest of the Avonlea scholars reached town just in time to
hurry off to the Academy. That first day passed pleasantly enough in a
whirl of excitement, meeting all the new students, learning to know the
professors by sight and being assorted and organized into classes. Anne
intended taking up the Second Year work being advised to do so by Miss
Stacy; Gilbert Blythe elected to do the same. This meant getting a
First Class teacher’s license in one year instead of two, if they were
successful; but it also meant much more and harder work. Jane, Ruby,
Josie, Charlie, and Moody Spurgeon, not being troubled with the
stirrings of ambition, were content to take up the Second Class work.
Anne was conscious of a pang of loneliness when she found herself in
a room with fifty other students, not one of whom she knew, except the
tall, brown-haired boy across the room; and knowing him in the fashion
she did, did not help her much, as she reflected pessimistically.
Yet she was undeniably glad that they were in the same class; the old
rivalry could still be carried on, and Anne would hardly have known what
to do if it had been lacking.

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable without it,” she thought. “Gilbert looks
awfully determined. I suppose he’s making up his mind, here and now, to
win the medal. What a splendid chin he has! I never noticed it before.
I do wish Jane and Ruby had gone in for First Class, too. I suppose I
won’t feel so much like a cat in a strange garret when I get acquainted,
though. I wonder which of the girls here are going to be my friends.
It’s really an interesting speculation. Of course I promised Diana that
no Queen’s girl, no matter how much I liked her, should ever be as dear
to me as she is; but I’ve lots of second-best affections to bestow. I
like the look of that girl with the brown eyes and the crimson waist.
She looks vivid and red-rosy; there’s that pale, fair one gazing out of
the window. She has lovely hair, and looks as if she knew a thing or two
about dreams. I’d like to know them both--know them well--well enough to
walk with my arm about their waists, and call them nicknames. But just
now I don’t know them and they don’t know me, and probably don’t want to
know me particularly. Oh, it’s lonesome!”

It was lonesomer still when Anne found herself alone in her hall bedroom
that night at twilight. She was not to board with the other girls, who
all had relatives in town to take pity on them. Miss Josephine Barry
would have liked to board her, but Beechwood was so far from the
Academy that it was out of the question; so Miss Barry hunted up a
boarding-house, assuring Matthew and Marilla that it was the very place
for Anne.

“The lady who keeps it is a reduced gentlewoman,” explained Miss Barry.
“Her husband was a British officer, and she is very careful what sort
of boarders she takes. Anne will not meet with any objectionable persons
under her roof. The table is good, and the house is near the Academy, in
a quiet neighborhood.”

All this might be quite true, and indeed, proved to be so, but it did
not materially help Anne in the first agony of homesickness that seized
upon her. She looked dismally about her narrow little room, with its
dull-papered, pictureless walls, its small iron bedstead and empty
book-case; and a horrible choke came into her throat as she thought of
her own white room at Green Gables, where she would have the pleasant
consciousness of a great green still outdoors, of sweet peas growing in
the garden, and moonlight falling on the orchard, of the brook below the
slope and the spruce boughs tossing in the night wind beyond it, of a
vast starry sky, and the light from Diana’s window shining out through
the gap in the trees. Here there was nothing of this; Anne knew that
outside of her window was a hard street, with a network of telephone
wires shutting out the sky, the tramp of alien feet, and a thousand
lights gleaming on stranger faces. She knew that she was going to cry,
and fought against it.

“I _won’t_ cry. It’s silly--and weak--there’s the third tear splashing
down by my nose. There are more coming! I must think of something funny
to stop them. But there’s nothing funny except what is connected with
Avonlea, and that only makes things worse--four--five--I’m going home
next Friday, but that seems a hundred years away. Oh, Matthew is nearly
home by now--and Marilla is at the gate, looking down the lane for
him--six--seven--eight--oh, there’s no use in counting them! They’re
coming in a flood presently. I can’t cheer up--I don’t _want_ to cheer up.
It’s nicer to be miserable!”

The flood of tears would have come, no doubt, had not Josie Pye appeared
at that moment. In the joy of seeing a familiar face Anne forgot that
there had never been much love lost between her and Josie. As a part of
Avonlea life even a Pye was welcome.

“I’m so glad you came up,” Anne said sincerely.

“You’ve been crying,” remarked Josie, with aggravating pity. “I suppose
you’re homesick--some people have so little self-control in that
respect. I’ve no intention of being homesick, I can tell you. Town’s too
jolly after that poky old Avonlea. I wonder how I ever existed there so
long. You shouldn’t cry, Anne; it isn’t becoming, for your nose and eyes
get red, and then you seem _all_ red. I’d a perfectly scrumptious time in
the Academy today. Our French professor is simply a duck. His moustache
would give you kerwollowps of the heart. Have you anything eatable
around, Anne? I’m literally starving. Ah, I guessed likely Marilla ‘d
load you up with cake. That’s why I called round. Otherwise I’d have
gone to the park to hear the band play with Frank Stockley. He boards
same place as I do, and he’s a sport. He noticed you in class today, and
asked me who the red-headed girl was. I told him you were an orphan that
the Cuthberts had adopted, and nobody knew very much about what you’d
been before that.”

Anne was wondering if, after all, solitude and tears were not more
satisfactory than Josie Pye’s companionship when Jane and Ruby appeared,
each with an inch of Queen’s color ribbon--purple and scarlet--pinned
proudly to her coat. As Josie was not “speaking” to Jane just then she
had to subside into comparative harmlessness.

“Well,” said Jane with a sigh, “I feel as if I’d lived many moons since
the morning. I ought to be home studying my Virgil--that horrid old
professor gave us twenty lines to start in on tomorrow. But I simply
couldn’t settle down to study tonight. Anne, methinks I see the
traces of tears. If you’ve been crying _do_ own up. It will restore my
self-respect, for I was shedding tears freely before Ruby came along. I
don’t mind being a goose so much if somebody else is goosey, too. Cake?
You’ll give me a teeny piece, won’t you? Thank you. It has the real
Avonlea flavor.”

Ruby, perceiving the Queen’s calendar lying on the table, wanted to know
if Anne meant to try for the gold medal.

Anne blushed and admitted she was thinking of it.

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Josie, “Queen’s is to get one of the Avery
scholarships after all. The word came today. Frank Stockley told me--his
uncle is one of the board of governors, you know. It will be announced
in the Academy tomorrow.”

An Avery scholarship! Anne felt her heart beat more quickly, and the
horizons of her ambition shifted and broadened as if by magic. Before
Josie had told the news Anne’s highest pinnacle of aspiration had been
a teacher’s provincial license, First Class, at the end of the year, and
perhaps the medal! But now in one moment Anne saw herself winning
the Avery scholarship, taking an Arts course at Redmond College, and
graduating in a gown and mortar board, before the echo of Josie’s words
had died away. For the Avery scholarship was in English, and Anne felt
that here her foot was on native heath.

A wealthy manufacturer of New Brunswick had died and left part of his
fortune to endow a large number of scholarships to be distributed
among the various high schools and academies of the Maritime Provinces,
according to their respective standings. There had been much doubt
whether one would be allotted to Queen’s, but the matter was settled at
last, and at the end of the year the graduate who made the highest mark
in English and English Literature would win the scholarship--two hundred
and fifty dollars a year for four years at Redmond College. No wonder
that Anne went to bed that night with tingling cheeks!

“I’ll win that scholarship if hard work can do it,” she resolved.
“Wouldn’t Matthew be proud if I got to be a B.A.? Oh, it’s delightful to
have ambitions. I’m so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to
be any end to them--that’s the best of it. Just as soon as you attain
to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does
make life so interesting.”


CHAPTER XXXV. The Winter at Queen’s


|ANNE’S homesickness wore off, greatly helped in the wearing by her
weekend visits home. As long as the open weather lasted the Avonlea
students went out to Carmody on the new branch railway every Friday
night. Diana and several other Avonlea young folks were generally on
hand to meet them and they all walked over to Avonlea in a merry party.
Anne thought those Friday evening gypsyings over the autumnal hills in
the crisp golden air, with the homelights of Avonlea twinkling beyond,
were the best and dearest hours in the whole week.

Gilbert Blythe nearly always walked with Ruby Gillis and carried her
satchel for her. Ruby was a very handsome young lady, now thinking
herself quite as grown up as she really was; she wore her skirts as long
as her mother would let her and did her hair up in town, though she had
to take it down when she went home. She had large, bright-blue eyes,
a brilliant complexion, and a plump showy figure. She laughed a great
deal, was cheerful and good-tempered, and enjoyed the pleasant things of
life frankly.

“But I shouldn’t think she was the sort of girl Gilbert would like,”
 whispered Jane to Anne. Anne did not think so either, but she would not
have said so for the Avery scholarship. She could not help thinking,
too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Gilbert
to jest and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and
ambitions. Gilbert had ambitions, she knew, and Ruby Gillis did not seem
the sort of person with whom such could be profitably discussed.

There was no silly sentiment in Anne’s ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys
were to her, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good
comrades. If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared
how many other friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a genius
for friendship; girl friends she had in plenty; but she had a vague
consciousness that masculine friendship might also be a good thing
to round out one’s conceptions of companionship and furnish broader
standpoints of judgment and comparison. Not that Anne could have put her
feelings on the matter into just such clear definition. But she thought
that if Gilbert had ever walked home with her from the train, over the
crisp fields and along the ferny byways, they might have had many and
merry and interesting conversations about the new world that was opening
around them and their hopes and ambitions therein. Gilbert was a clever
young fellow, with his own thoughts about things and a determination to
get the best out of life and put the best into it. Ruby Gillis told Jane
Andrews that she didn’t understand half the things Gilbert Blythe said;
he talked just like Anne Shirley did when she had a thoughtful fit on
and for her part she didn’t think it any fun to be bothering about books
and that sort of thing when you didn’t have to. Frank Stockley had lots
more dash and go, but then he wasn’t half as good-looking as Gilbert and
she really couldn’t decide which she liked best!

In the Academy Anne gradually drew a little circle of friends about
her, thoughtful, imaginative, ambitious students like herself. With the
“rose-red” girl, Stella Maynard, and the “dream girl,” Priscilla Grant,
she soon became intimate, finding the latter pale spiritual-looking
maiden to be full to the brim of mischief and pranks and fun, while the
vivid, black-eyed Stella had a heartful of wistful dreams and fancies,
as aerial and rainbow-like as Anne’s own.

After the Christmas holidays the Avonlea students gave up going home
on Fridays and settled down to hard work. By this time all the Queen’s
scholars had gravitated into their own places in the ranks and
the various classes had assumed distinct and settled shadings of
individuality. Certain facts had become generally accepted. It was
admitted that the medal contestants had practically narrowed down
to three--Gilbert Blythe, Anne Shirley, and Lewis Wilson; the Avery
scholarship was more doubtful, any one of a certain six being a possible
winner. The bronze medal for mathematics was considered as good as
won by a fat, funny little up-country boy with a bumpy forehead and a
patched coat.

Ruby Gillis was the handsomest girl of the year at the Academy; in the
Second Year classes Stella Maynard carried off the palm for beauty, with
small but critical minority in favor of Anne Shirley. Ethel Marr was
admitted by all competent judges to have the most stylish modes
of hair-dressing, and Jane Andrews--plain, plodding, conscientious
Jane--carried off the honors in the domestic science course. Even Josie
Pye attained a certain preeminence as the sharpest-tongued young lady in
attendance at Queen’s. So it may be fairly stated that Miss Stacy’s old
pupils held their own in the wider arena of the academical course.

Anne worked hard and steadily. Her rivalry with Gilbert was as intense
as it had ever been in Avonlea school, although it was not known in the
class at large, but somehow the bitterness had gone out of it. Anne no
longer wished to win for the sake of defeating Gilbert; rather, for the
proud consciousness of a well-won victory over a worthy foeman. It
would be worth while to win, but she no longer thought life would be
insupportable if she did not.

In spite of lessons the students found opportunities for pleasant times.
Anne spent many of her spare hours at Beechwood and generally ate her
Sunday dinners there and went to church with Miss Barry. The latter was,
as she admitted, growing old, but her black eyes were not dim nor the
vigor of her tongue in the least abated. But she never sharpened the
latter on Anne, who continued to be a prime favorite with the critical
old lady.

“That Anne-girl improves all the time,” she said. “I get tired of other
girls--there is such a provoking and eternal sameness about them. Anne
has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while
it lasts. I don’t know that she is as amusing as she was when she was
a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love
them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them.”

Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in
Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where
snow-wreaths lingered; and the “mist of green” was on the woods and in
the valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Queen’s students thought and
talked only of examinations.

“It doesn’t seem possible that the term is nearly over,” said Anne.
“Why, last fall it seemed so long to look forward to--a whole winter
of studies and classes. And here we are, with the exams looming up next
week. Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but
when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and
the misty blue air at the end of the streets they don’t seem half so
important.”

Jane and Ruby and Josie, who had dropped in, did not take this view
of it. To them the coming examinations were constantly very important
indeed--far more important than chestnut buds or Maytime hazes. It was
all very well for Anne, who was sure of passing at least, to have her
moments of belittling them, but when your whole future depended on
them--as the girls truly thought theirs did--you could not regard them
philosophically.

“I’ve lost seven pounds in the last two weeks,” sighed Jane. “It’s no
use to say don’t worry. I _will_ worry. Worrying helps you some--it
seems as if you were doing something when you’re worrying. It would be
dreadful if I failed to get my license after going to Queen’s all winter
and spending so much money.”

“_I_ don’t care,” said Josie Pye. “If I don’t pass this year I’m coming
back next. My father can afford to send me. Anne, Frank Stockley says
that Professor Tremaine said Gilbert Blythe was sure to get the medal
and that Emily Clay would likely win the Avery scholarship.”

“That may make me feel badly tomorrow, Josie,” laughed Anne, “but just
now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are coming out
all purple down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little ferns
are poking their heads up in Lovers’ Lane, it’s not a great deal of
difference whether I win the Avery or not. I’ve done my best and I begin
to understand what is meant by the ‘joy of the strife.’ Next to trying
and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. Girls, don’t talk
about exams! Look at that arch of pale green sky over those houses
and picture to yourself what it must look like over the purply-dark
beech-woods back of Avonlea.”

“What are you going to wear for commencement, Jane?” asked Ruby
practically.

Jane and Josie both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side
eddy of fashions. But Anne, with her elbows on the window sill, her soft
cheek laid against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions,
looked out unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome
of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden
tissue of youth’s own optimism. All the Beyond was hers with its
possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years--each year a rose of
promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet.


CHAPTER XXXVI. The Glory and the Dream


|ON the morning when the final results of all the examinations were to be
posted on the bulletin board at Queen’s, Anne and Jane walked down the
street together. Jane was smiling and happy; examinations were over
and she was comfortably sure she had made a pass at least; further
considerations troubled Jane not at all; she had no soaring ambitions
and consequently was not affected with the unrest attendant thereon. For
we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although
ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but
exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.
Anne was pale and quiet; in ten more minutes she would know who had
won the medal and who the Avery. Beyond those ten minutes there did not
seem, just then, to be anything worth being called Time.

“Of course you’ll win one of them anyhow,” said Jane, who couldn’t
understand how the faculty could be so unfair as to order it otherwise.

“I have not hope of the Avery,” said Anne. “Everybody says Emily Clay
will win it. And I’m not going to march up to that bulletin board and
look at it before everybody. I haven’t the moral courage. I’m going
straight to the girls’ dressing room. You must read the announcements
and then come and tell me, Jane. And I implore you in the name of our
old friendship to do it as quickly as possible. If I have failed just
say so, without trying to break it gently; and whatever you do _don’t_
sympathize with me. Promise me this, Jane.”

Jane promised solemnly; but, as it happened, there was no necessity for
such a promise. When they went up the entrance steps of Queen’s they
found the hall full of boys who were carrying Gilbert Blythe around on
their shoulders and yelling at the tops of their voices, “Hurrah for
Blythe, Medalist!”

For a moment Anne felt one sickening pang of defeat and disappointment.
So she had failed and Gilbert had won! Well, Matthew would be sorry--he
had been so sure she would win.

And then!

Somebody called out:

“Three cheers for Miss Shirley, winner of the Avery!”

“Oh, Anne,” gasped Jane, as they fled to the girls’ dressing room amid
hearty cheers. “Oh, Anne I’m so proud! Isn’t it splendid?”

And then the girls were around them and Anne was the center of a
laughing, congratulating group. Her shoulders were thumped and her hands
shaken vigorously. She was pushed and pulled and hugged and among it all
she managed to whisper to Jane:

“Oh, won’t Matthew and Marilla be pleased! I must write the news home
right away.”

Commencement was the next important happening. The exercises were held
in the big assembly hall of the Academy. Addresses were given, essays
read, songs sung, the public award of diplomas, prizes and medals made.

Matthew and Marilla were there, with eyes and ears for only one student
on the platform--a tall girl in pale green, with faintly flushed
cheeks and starry eyes, who read the best essay and was pointed out and
whispered about as the Avery winner.

“Reckon you’re glad we kept her, Marilla?” whispered Matthew, speaking
for the first time since he had entered the hall, when Anne had finished
her essay.

“It’s not the first time I’ve been glad,” retorted Marilla. “You do like
to rub things in, Matthew Cuthbert.”

Miss Barry, who was sitting behind them, leaned forward and poked
Marilla in the back with her parasol.

“Aren’t you proud of that Anne-girl? I am,” she said.

Anne went home to Avonlea with Matthew and Marilla that evening. She had
not been home since April and she felt that she could not wait another
day. The apple blossoms were out and the world was fresh and young.
Diana was at Green Gables to meet her. In her own white room, where
Marilla had set a flowering house rose on the window sill, Anne looked
about her and drew a long breath of happiness.

“Oh, Diana, it’s so good to be back again. It’s so good to see those
pointed firs coming out against the pink sky--and that white orchard and
the old Snow Queen. Isn’t the breath of the mint delicious? And that tea
rose--why, it’s a song and a hope and a prayer all in one. And it’s _good_
to see you again, Diana!”

“I thought you liked that Stella Maynard better than me,” said
Diana reproachfully. “Josie Pye told me you did. Josie said you were
_infatuated_ with her.”

Anne laughed and pelted Diana with the faded “June lilies” of her
bouquet.

“Stella Maynard is the dearest girl in the world except one and you are
that one, Diana,” she said. “I love you more than ever--and I’ve so many
things to tell you. But just now I feel as if it were joy enough to sit
here and look at you. I’m tired, I think--tired of being studious and
ambitious. I mean to spend at least two hours tomorrow lying out in the
orchard grass, thinking of absolutely nothing.”

“You’ve done splendidly, Anne. I suppose you won’t be teaching now that
you’ve won the Avery?”

“No. I’m going to Redmond in September. Doesn’t it seem wonderful? I’ll
have a brand new stock of ambition laid in by that time after three
glorious, golden months of vacation. Jane and Ruby are going to teach.
Isn’t it splendid to think we all got through even to Moody Spurgeon and
Josie Pye?”

“The Newbridge trustees have offered Jane their school already,” said
Diana. “Gilbert Blythe is going to teach, too. He has to. His father
can’t afford to send him to college next year, after all, so he means
to earn his own way through. I expect he’ll get the school here if Miss
Ames decides to leave.”

Anne felt a queer little sensation of dismayed surprise. She had not
known this; she had expected that Gilbert would be going to Redmond
also. What would she do without their inspiring rivalry? Would not
work, even at a coeducational college with a real degree in prospect, be
rather flat without her friend the enemy?

The next morning at breakfast it suddenly struck Anne that Matthew was
not looking well. Surely he was much grayer than he had been a year
before.

“Marilla,” she said hesitatingly when he had gone out, “is Matthew quite
well?”

“No, he isn’t,” said Marilla in a troubled tone. “He’s had some real
bad spells with his heart this spring and he won’t spare himself a mite.
I’ve been real worried about him, but he’s some better this while back
and we’ve got a good hired man, so I’m hoping he’ll kind of rest and
pick up. Maybe he will now you’re home. You always cheer him up.”

Anne leaned across the table and took Marilla’s face in her hands.

“You are not looking as well yourself as I’d like to see you, Marilla.
You look tired. I’m afraid you’ve been working too hard. You must take
a rest, now that I’m home. I’m just going to take this one day off to
visit all the dear old spots and hunt up my old dreams, and then it will
be your turn to be lazy while I do the work.”

Marilla smiled affectionately at her girl.

“It’s not the work--it’s my head. I’ve got a pain so often now--behind
my eyes. Doctor Spencer’s been fussing with glasses, but they don’t do
me any good. There is a distinguished oculist coming to the Island the
last of June and the doctor says I must see him. I guess I’ll have to.
I can’t read or sew with any comfort now. Well, Anne, you’ve done real
well at Queen’s I must say. To take First Class License in one year and
win the Avery scholarship--well, well, Mrs. Lynde says pride goes before
a fall and she doesn’t believe in the higher education of women at all;
she says it unfits them for woman’s true sphere. I don’t believe a word
of it. Speaking of Rachel reminds me--did you hear anything about the
Abbey Bank lately, Anne?”

“I heard it was shaky,” answered Anne. “Why?”

“That is what Rachel said. She was up here one day last week and said
there was some talk about it. Matthew felt real worried. All we have
saved is in that bank--every penny. I wanted Matthew to put it in the
Savings Bank in the first place, but old Mr. Abbey was a great friend of
father’s and he’d always banked with him. Matthew said any bank with him
at the head of it was good enough for anybody.”

“I think he has only been its nominal head for many years,” said
Anne. “He is a very old man; his nephews are really at the head of the
institution.”

“Well, when Rachel told us that, I wanted Matthew to draw our money
right out and he said he’d think of it. But Mr. Russell told him
yesterday that the bank was all right.”

Anne had her good day in the companionship of the outdoor world. She
never forgot that day; it was so bright and golden and fair, so free
from shadow and so lavish of blossom. Anne spent some of its rich hours
in the orchard; she went to the Dryad’s Bubble and Willowmere and Violet
Vale; she called at the manse and had a satisfying talk with Mrs. Allan;
and finally in the evening she went with Matthew for the cows, through
Lovers’ Lane to the back pasture. The woods were all gloried through
with sunset and the warm splendor of it streamed down through the hill
gaps in the west. Matthew walked slowly with bent head; Anne, tall and
erect, suited her springing step to his.

“You’ve been working too hard today, Matthew,” she said reproachfully.
“Why won’t you take things easier?”

“Well now, I can’t seem to,” said Matthew, as he opened the yard gate
to let the cows through. “It’s only that I’m getting old, Anne, and keep
forgetting it. Well, well, I’ve always worked pretty hard and I’d rather
drop in harness.”

“If I had been the boy you sent for,” said Anne wistfully, “I’d be able
to help you so much now and spare you in a hundred ways. I could find it
in my heart to wish I had been, just for that.”

“Well now, I’d rather have you than a dozen boys, Anne,” said Matthew
patting her hand. “Just mind you that--rather than a dozen boys. Well
now, I guess it wasn’t a boy that took the Avery scholarship, was it? It
was a girl--my girl--my girl that I’m proud of.”

He smiled his shy smile at her as he went into the yard. Anne took the
memory of it with her when she went to her room that night and sat for a
long while at her open window, thinking of the past and dreaming of the
future. Outside the Snow Queen was mistily white in the moonshine;
the frogs were singing in the marsh beyond Orchard Slope. Anne always
remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night.
It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is
ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has
been laid upon it.


CHAPTER XXXVII. The Reaper Whose Name Is Death


|MATTHEW--Matthew--what is the matter? Matthew, are you sick?”

It was Marilla who spoke, alarm in every jerky word. Anne came through
the hall, her hands full of white narcissus,--it was long before Anne
could love the sight or odor of white narcissus again,--in time to hear
her and to see Matthew standing in the porch doorway, a folded paper
in his hand, and his face strangely drawn and gray. Anne dropped her
flowers and sprang across the kitchen to him at the same moment as
Marilla. They were both too late; before they could reach him Matthew
had fallen across the threshold.

“He’s fainted,” gasped Marilla. “Anne, run for Martin--quick, quick!
He’s at the barn.”

Martin, the hired man, who had just driven home from the post office,
started at once for the doctor, calling at Orchard Slope on his way to
send Mr. and Mrs. Barry over. Mrs. Lynde, who was there on an errand,
came too. They found Anne and Marilla distractedly trying to restore
Matthew to consciousness.

Mrs. Lynde pushed them gently aside, tried his pulse, and then laid her
ear over his heart. She looked at their anxious faces sorrowfully and
the tears came into her eyes.

“Oh, Marilla,” she said gravely. “I don’t think--we can do anything for
him.”

“Mrs. Lynde, you don’t think--you can’t think Matthew is--is--” Anne
could not say the dreadful word; she turned sick and pallid.

“Child, yes, I’m afraid of it. Look at his face. When you’ve seen that
look as often as I have you’ll know what it means.”

Anne looked at the still face and there beheld the seal of the Great
Presence.

When the doctor came he said that death had been instantaneous and
probably painless, caused in all likelihood by some sudden shock. The
secret of the shock was discovered to be in the paper Matthew had held
and which Martin had brought from the office that morning. It contained
an account of the failure of the Abbey Bank.

The news spread quickly through Avonlea, and all day friends and
neighbors thronged Green Gables and came and went on errands of kindness
for the dead and living. For the first time shy, quiet Matthew Cuthbert
was a person of central importance; the white majesty of death had
fallen on him and set him apart as one crowned.

When the calm night came softly down over Green Gables the old house was
hushed and tranquil. In the parlor lay Matthew Cuthbert in his coffin,
his long gray hair framing his placid face on which there was a little
kindly smile as if he but slept, dreaming pleasant dreams. There were
flowers about him--sweet old-fashioned flowers which his mother had
planted in the homestead garden in her bridal days and for which Matthew
had always had a secret, wordless love. Anne had gathered them and
brought them to him, her anguished, tearless eyes burning in her white
face. It was the last thing she could do for him.

The Barrys and Mrs. Lynde stayed with them that night. Diana, going to
the east gable, where Anne was standing at her window, said gently:

“Anne dear, would you like to have me sleep with you tonight?”

“Thank you, Diana.” Anne looked earnestly into her friend’s face. “I
think you won’t misunderstand me when I say I want to be alone. I’m not
afraid. I haven’t been alone one minute since it happened--and I want to
be. I want to be quite silent and quiet and try to realize it. I can’t
realize it. Half the time it seems to me that Matthew can’t be dead; and
the other half it seems as if he must have been dead for a long time and
I’ve had this horrible dull ache ever since.”

Diana did not quite understand. Marilla’s impassioned grief, breaking
all the bounds of natural reserve and lifelong habit in its stormy rush,
she could comprehend better than Anne’s tearless agony. But she went
away kindly, leaving Anne alone to keep her first vigil with sorrow.

Anne hoped that the tears would come in solitude. It seemed to her a
terrible thing that she could not shed a tear for Matthew, whom she had
loved so much and who had been so kind to her, Matthew who had walked
with her last evening at sunset and was now lying in the dim room below
with that awful peace on his brow. But no tears came at first, even when
she knelt by her window in the darkness and prayed, looking up to the
stars beyond the hills--no tears, only the same horrible dull ache of
misery that kept on aching until she fell asleep, worn out with the
day’s pain and excitement.

In the night she awakened, with the stillness and the darkness about
her, and the recollection of the day came over her like a wave of
sorrow. She could see Matthew’s face smiling at her as he had smiled
when they parted at the gate that last evening--she could hear his voice
saying, “My girl--my girl that I’m proud of.” Then the tears came and
Anne wept her heart out. Marilla heard her and crept in to comfort her.

“There--there--don’t cry so, dearie. It can’t bring him back.
It--it--isn’t right to cry so. I knew that today, but I couldn’t help
it then. He’d always been such a good, kind brother to me--but God knows
best.”

“Oh, just let me cry, Marilla,” sobbed Anne. “The tears don’t hurt me
like that ache did. Stay here for a little while with me and keep your
arm round me--so. I couldn’t have Diana stay, she’s good and kind and
sweet--but it’s not her sorrow--she’s outside of it and she couldn’t
come close enough to my heart to help me. It’s our sorrow--yours and
mine. Oh, Marilla, what will we do without him?”

“We’ve got each other, Anne. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t
here--if you’d never come. Oh, Anne, I know I’ve been kind of strict and
harsh with you maybe--but you mustn’t think I didn’t love you as well as
Matthew did, for all that. I want to tell you now when I can. It’s never
been easy for me to say things out of my heart, but at times like this
it’s easier. I love you as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood
and you’ve been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables.”

Two days afterwards they carried Matthew Cuthbert over his homestead
threshold and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he had
loved and the trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back to its
usual placidity and even at Green Gables affairs slipped into their old
groove and work was done and duties fulfilled with regularity as before,
although always with the aching sense of “loss in all familiar things.”
 Anne, new to grief, thought it almost sad that it could be so--that
they _could_ go on in the old way without Matthew. She felt something like
shame and remorse when she discovered that the sunrises behind the firs
and the pale pink buds opening in the garden gave her the old inrush of
gladness when she saw them--that Diana’s visits were pleasant to her
and that Diana’s merry words and ways moved her to laughter and
smiles--that, in brief, the beautiful world of blossom and love and
friendship had lost none of its power to please her fancy and thrill her
heart, that life still called to her with many insistent voices.

“It seems like disloyalty to Matthew, somehow, to find pleasure in
these things now that he has gone,” she said wistfully to Mrs. Allan
one evening when they were together in the manse garden. “I miss him so
much--all the time--and yet, Mrs. Allan, the world and life seem very
beautiful and interesting to me for all. Today Diana said something
funny and I found myself laughing. I thought when it happened I could
never laugh again. And it somehow seems as if I oughtn’t to.”

“When Matthew was here he liked to hear you laugh and he liked to know
that you found pleasure in the pleasant things around you,” said Mrs.
Allan gently. “He is just away now; and he likes to know it just the
same. I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing
influences that nature offers us. But I can understand your feeling.
I think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that
anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share
the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our
sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us.”

“I was down to the graveyard to plant a rosebush on Matthew’s grave
this afternoon,” said Anne dreamily. “I took a slip of the little white
Scotch rosebush his mother brought out from Scotland long ago; Matthew
always liked those roses the best--they were so small and sweet on
their thorny stems. It made me feel glad that I could plant it by his
grave--as if I were doing something that must please him in taking it
there to be near him. I hope he has roses like them in heaven. Perhaps
the souls of all those little white roses that he has loved so many
summers were all there to meet him. I must go home now. Marilla is all
alone and she gets lonely at twilight.”

“She will be lonelier still, I fear, when you go away again to college,”
 said Mrs. Allan.

Anne did not reply; she said good night and went slowly back to green
Gables. Marilla was sitting on the front door-steps and Anne sat down
beside her. The door was open behind them, held back by a big pink conch
shell with hints of sea sunsets in its smooth inner convolutions.

Anne gathered some sprays of pale-yellow honeysuckle and put them in
her hair. She liked the delicious hint of fragrance, as some aerial
benediction, above her every time she moved.

“Doctor Spencer was here while you were away,” Marilla said. “He says
that the specialist will be in town tomorrow and he insists that I must
go in and have my eyes examined. I suppose I’d better go and have it
over. I’ll be more than thankful if the man can give me the right kind
of glasses to suit my eyes. You won’t mind staying here alone while I’m
away, will you? Martin will have to drive me in and there’s ironing and
baking to do.”

“I shall be all right. Diana will come over for company for me. I shall
attend to the ironing and baking beautifully--you needn’t fear that I’ll
starch the handkerchiefs or flavor the cake with liniment.”

Marilla laughed.

“What a girl you were for making mistakes in them days, Anne. You were
always getting into scrapes. I did use to think you were possessed. Do
you mind the time you dyed your hair?”

“Yes, indeed. I shall never forget it,” smiled Anne, touching the heavy
braid of hair that was wound about her shapely head. “I laugh a little
now sometimes when I think what a worry my hair used to be to me--but I
don’t laugh _much_, because it was a very real trouble then. I did suffer
terribly over my hair and my freckles. My freckles are really gone; and
people are nice enough to tell me my hair is auburn now--all but Josie
Pye. She informed me yesterday that she really thought it was redder
than ever, or at least my black dress made it look redder, and she asked
me if people who had red hair ever got used to having it. Marilla, I’ve
almost decided to give up trying to like Josie Pye. I’ve made what I
would once have called a heroic effort to like her, but Josie Pye won’t
_be_ liked.”

“Josie is a Pye,” said Marilla sharply, “so she can’t help being
disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful purpose in
society, but I must say I don’t know what it is any more than I know the
use of thistles. Is Josie going to teach?”

“No, she is going back to Queen’s next year. So are Moody Spurgeon and
Charlie Sloane. Jane and Ruby are going to teach and they have both got
schools--Jane at Newbridge and Ruby at some place up west.”

“Gilbert Blythe is going to teach too, isn’t he?”

“Yes”--briefly.

“What a nice-looking fellow he is,” said Marilla absently. “I saw him in
church last Sunday and he seemed so tall and manly. He looks a lot like
his father did at the same age. John Blythe was a nice boy. We used to
be real good friends, he and I. People called him my beau.”

Anne looked up with swift interest.

“Oh, Marilla--and what happened?--why didn’t you--”

“We had a quarrel. I wouldn’t forgive him when he asked me to. I meant
to, after awhile--but I was sulky and angry and I wanted to punish him
first. He never came back--the Blythes were all mighty independent. But
I always felt--rather sorry. I’ve always kind of wished I’d forgiven him
when I had the chance.”

“So you’ve had a bit of romance in your life, too,” said Anne softly.

“Yes, I suppose you might call it that. You wouldn’t think so to look at
me, would you? But you never can tell about people from their outsides.
Everybody has forgot about me and John. I’d forgotten myself. But it all
came back to me when I saw Gilbert last Sunday.”


CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Bend in the road


|MARILLA went to town the next day and returned in the evening. Anne had
gone over to Orchard Slope with Diana and came back to find Marilla in
the kitchen, sitting by the table with her head leaning on her hand.
Something in her dejected attitude struck a chill to Anne’s heart. She
had never seen Marilla sit limply inert like that.

“Are you very tired, Marilla?”

“Yes--no--I don’t know,” said Marilla wearily, looking up. “I suppose I
am tired but I haven’t thought about it. It’s not that.”

“Did you see the oculist? What did he say?” asked Anne anxiously.

“Yes, I saw him. He examined my eyes. He says that if I give up all
reading and sewing entirely and any kind of work that strains the eyes,
and if I’m careful not to cry, and if I wear the glasses he’s given me
he thinks my eyes may not get any worse and my headaches will be cured.
But if I don’t he says I’ll certainly be stone-blind in six months.
Blind! Anne, just think of it!”

For a minute Anne, after her first quick exclamation of dismay, was
silent. It seemed to her that she could _not_ speak. Then she said
bravely, but with a catch in her voice:

“Marilla, _don’t_ think of it. You know he has given you hope. If you are
careful you won’t lose your sight altogether; and if his glasses cure
your headaches it will be a great thing.”

“I don’t call it much hope,” said Marilla bitterly. “What am I to live
for if I can’t read or sew or do anything like that? I might as well
be blind--or dead. And as for crying, I can’t help that when I get
lonesome. But there, it’s no good talking about it. If you’ll get me
a cup of tea I’ll be thankful. I’m about done out. Don’t say anything
about this to any one for a spell yet, anyway. I can’t bear that folks
should come here to question and sympathize and talk about it.”

When Marilla had eaten her lunch Anne persuaded her to go to bed. Then
Anne went herself to the east gable and sat down by her window in the
darkness alone with her tears and her heaviness of heart. How sadly
things had changed since she had sat there the night after coming home!
Then she had been full of hope and joy and the future had looked rosy
with promise. Anne felt as if she had lived years since then, but before
she went to bed there was a smile on her lips and peace in her heart.
She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a
friend--as duty ever is when we meet it frankly.

One afternoon a few days later Marilla came slowly in from the front
yard where she had been talking to a caller--a man whom Anne knew by
sight as Sadler from Carmody. Anne wondered what he could have been
saying to bring that look to Marilla’s face.

“What did Mr. Sadler want, Marilla?”

Marilla sat down by the window and looked at Anne. There were tears in
her eyes in defiance of the oculist’s prohibition and her voice broke as
she said:

“He heard that I was going to sell Green Gables and he wants to buy it.”

“Buy it! Buy Green Gables?” Anne wondered if she had heard aright. “Oh,
Marilla, you don’t mean to sell Green Gables!”

“Anne, I don’t know what else is to be done. I’ve thought it all over.
If my eyes were strong I could stay here and make out to look after
things and manage, with a good hired man. But as it is I can’t. I may
lose my sight altogether; and anyway I’ll not be fit to run things. Oh,
I never thought I’d live to see the day when I’d have to sell my home.
But things would only go behind worse and worse all the time, till
nobody would want to buy it. Every cent of our money went in that bank;
and there’s some notes Matthew gave last fall to pay. Mrs. Lynde advises
me to sell the farm and board somewhere--with her I suppose. It won’t
bring much--it’s small and the buildings are old. But it’ll be enough
for me to live on I reckon. I’m thankful you’re provided for with that
scholarship, Anne. I’m sorry you won’t have a home to come to in your
vacations, that’s all, but I suppose you’ll manage somehow.”

Marilla broke down and wept bitterly.

“You mustn’t sell Green Gables,” said Anne resolutely.

“Oh, Anne, I wish I didn’t have to. But you can see for yourself. I
can’t stay here alone. I’d go crazy with trouble and loneliness. And my
sight would go--I know it would.”

“You won’t have to stay here alone, Marilla. I’ll be with you. I’m not
going to Redmond.”

“Not going to Redmond!” Marilla lifted her worn face from her hands and
looked at Anne. “Why, what do you mean?”

“Just what I say. I’m not going to take the scholarship. I decided so
the night after you came home from town. You surely don’t think I could
leave you alone in your trouble, Marilla, after all you’ve done for me.
I’ve been thinking and planning. Let me tell you my plans. Mr. Barry
wants to rent the farm for next year. So you won’t have any bother over
that. And I’m going to teach. I’ve applied for the school here--but I
don’t expect to get it for I understand the trustees have promised it to
Gilbert Blythe. But I can have the Carmody school--Mr. Blair told me
so last night at the store. Of course that won’t be quite as nice or
convenient as if I had the Avonlea school. But I can board home and
drive myself over to Carmody and back, in the warm weather at least. And
even in winter I can come home Fridays. We’ll keep a horse for that. Oh,
I have it all planned out, Marilla. And I’ll read to you and keep you
cheered up. You sha’n’t be dull or lonesome. And we’ll be real cozy and
happy here together, you and I.”

Marilla had listened like a woman in a dream.

“Oh, Anne, I could get on real well if you were here, I know. But I
can’t let you sacrifice yourself so for me. It would be terrible.”

“Nonsense!” Anne laughed merrily. “There is no sacrifice. Nothing could
be worse than giving up Green Gables--nothing could hurt me more. We
must keep the dear old place. My mind is quite made up, Marilla. I’m _not_
going to Redmond; and I _am_ going to stay here and teach. Don’t you worry
about me a bit.”

“But your ambitions--and--”

“I’m just as ambitious as ever. Only, I’ve changed the object of my
ambitions. I’m going to be a good teacher--and I’m going to save your
eyesight. Besides, I mean to study at home here and take a little
college course all by myself. Oh, I’ve dozens of plans, Marilla. I’ve
been thinking them out for a week. I shall give life here my best, and
I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queen’s my
future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought
I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I
don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the
best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder
how the road beyond it goes--what there is of green glory and
soft, checkered light and shadows--what new landscapes--what new
beauties--what curves and hills and valleys further on.”

“I don’t feel as if I ought to let you give it up,” said Marilla,
referring to the scholarship.

“But you can’t prevent me. I’m sixteen and a half, ‘obstinate as a
mule,’ as Mrs. Lynde once told me,” laughed Anne. “Oh, Marilla, don’t
you go pitying me. I don’t like to be pitied, and there is no need
for it. I’m heart glad over the very thought of staying at dear Green
Gables. Nobody could love it as you and I do--so we must keep it.”

“You blessed girl!” said Marilla, yielding. “I feel as if you’d given me
new life. I guess I ought to stick out and make you go to college--but
I know I can’t, so I ain’t going to try. I’ll make it up to you though,
Anne.”

When it became noised abroad in Avonlea that Anne Shirley had given up
the idea of going to college and intended to stay home and teach there
was a good deal of discussion over it. Most of the good folks, not
knowing about Marilla’s eyes, thought she was foolish. Mrs. Allan did
not. She told Anne so in approving words that brought tears of pleasure
to the girl’s eyes. Neither did good Mrs. Lynde. She came up one evening
and found Anne and Marilla sitting at the front door in the warm,
scented summer dusk. They liked to sit there when the twilight came down
and the white moths flew about in the garden and the odor of mint filled
the dewy air.

Mrs. Rachel deposited her substantial person upon the stone bench by the
door, behind which grew a row of tall pink and yellow hollyhocks, with a
long breath of mingled weariness and relief.

“I declare I’m getting glad to sit down. I’ve been on my feet all day,
and two hundred pounds is a good bit for two feet to carry round. It’s
a great blessing not to be fat, Marilla. I hope you appreciate it. Well,
Anne, I hear you’ve given up your notion of going to college. I was
real glad to hear it. You’ve got as much education now as a woman can be
comfortable with. I don’t believe in girls going to college with the men
and cramming their heads full of Latin and Greek and all that nonsense.”

“But I’m going to study Latin and Greek just the same, Mrs. Lynde,” said
Anne laughing. “I’m going to take my Arts course right here at Green
Gables, and study everything that I would at college.”

Mrs. Lynde lifted her hands in holy horror.

“Anne Shirley, you’ll kill yourself.”

“Not a bit of it. I shall thrive on it. Oh, I’m not going to overdo
things. As ‘Josiah Allen’s wife,’ says, I shall be ‘mejum’. But I’ll
have lots of spare time in the long winter evenings, and I’ve no
vocation for fancy work. I’m going to teach over at Carmody, you know.”

“I don’t know it. I guess you’re going to teach right here in Avonlea.
The trustees have decided to give you the school.”

“Mrs. Lynde!” cried Anne, springing to her feet in her surprise. “Why, I
thought they had promised it to Gilbert Blythe!”

“So they did. But as soon as Gilbert heard that you had applied for it
he went to them--they had a business meeting at the school last night,
you know--and told them that he withdrew his application, and suggested
that they accept yours. He said he was going to teach at White Sands. Of
course he knew how much you wanted to stay with Marilla, and I must
say I think it was real kind and thoughtful in him, that’s what. Real
self-sacrificing, too, for he’ll have his board to pay at White Sands,
and everybody knows he’s got to earn his own way through college. So the
trustees decided to take you. I was tickled to death when Thomas came
home and told me.”

“I don’t feel that I ought to take it,” murmured Anne. “I mean--I don’t
think I ought to let Gilbert make such a sacrifice for--for me.”

“I guess you can’t prevent him now. He’s signed papers with the White
Sands trustees. So it wouldn’t do him any good now if you were to
refuse. Of course you’ll take the school. You’ll get along all right,
now that there are no Pyes going. Josie was the last of them, and a
good thing she was, that’s what. There’s been some Pye or other going to
Avonlea school for the last twenty years, and I guess their mission in
life was to keep school teachers reminded that earth isn’t their home.
Bless my heart! What does all that winking and blinking at the Barry
gable mean?”

“Diana is signaling for me to go over,” laughed Anne. “You know we keep
up the old custom. Excuse me while I run over and see what she wants.”

Anne ran down the clover slope like a deer, and disappeared in the firry
shadows of the Haunted Wood. Mrs. Lynde looked after her indulgently.

“There’s a good deal of the child about her yet in some ways.”

“There’s a good deal more of the woman about her in others,” retorted
Marilla, with a momentary return of her old crispness.

But crispness was no longer Marilla’s distinguishing characteristic. As
Mrs. Lynde told her Thomas that night.

“Marilla Cuthbert has got _mellow_. That’s what.”

Anne went to the little Avonlea graveyard the next evening to put fresh
flowers on Matthew’s grave and water the Scotch rosebush. She lingered
there until dusk, liking the peace and calm of the little place,
with its poplars whose rustle was like low, friendly speech, and its
whispering grasses growing at will among the graves. When she finally
left it and walked down the long hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining
Waters it was past sunset and all Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike
afterlight--“a haunt of ancient peace.” There was a freshness in the
air as of a wind that had blown over honey-sweet fields of clover. Home
lights twinkled out here and there among the homestead trees. Beyond lay
the sea, misty and purple, with its haunting, unceasing murmur. The west
was a glory of soft mingled hues, and the pond reflected them all in
still softer shadings. The beauty of it all thrilled Anne’s heart, and
she gratefully opened the gates of her soul to it.

“Dear old world,” she murmured, “you are very lovely, and I am glad to
be alive in you.”

Halfway down the hill a tall lad came whistling out of a gate before the
Blythe homestead. It was Gilbert, and the whistle died on his lips as he
recognized Anne. He lifted his cap courteously, but he would have passed
on in silence, if Anne had not stopped and held out her hand.

“Gilbert,” she said, with scarlet cheeks, “I want to thank you for
giving up the school for me. It was very good of you--and I want you to
know that I appreciate it.”

Gilbert took the offered hand eagerly.

“It wasn’t particularly good of me at all, Anne. I was pleased to be
able to do you some small service. Are we going to be friends after
this? Have you really forgiven me my old fault?”

Anne laughed and tried unsuccessfully to withdraw her hand.

“I forgave you that day by the pond landing, although I didn’t know
it. What a stubborn little goose I was. I’ve been--I may as well make a
complete confession--I’ve been sorry ever since.”

“We are going to be the best of friends,” said Gilbert, jubilantly. “We
were born to be good friends, Anne. You’ve thwarted destiny enough. I
know we can help each other in many ways. You are going to keep up your
studies, aren’t you? So am I. Come, I’m going to walk home with you.”

Marilla looked curiously at Anne when the latter entered the kitchen.

“Who was that came up the lane with you, Anne?”

“Gilbert Blythe,” answered Anne, vexed to find herself blushing. “I met
him on Barry’s hill.”

“I didn’t think you and Gilbert Blythe were such good friends that you’d
stand for half an hour at the gate talking to him,” said Marilla with a
dry smile.

“We haven’t been--we’ve been good enemies. But we have decided that it
will be much more sensible to be good friends in the future. Were we
really there half an hour? It seemed just a few minutes. But, you see,
we have five years’ lost conversations to catch up with, Marilla.”

Anne sat long at her window that night companioned by a glad content.
The wind purred softly in the cherry boughs, and the mint breaths came
up to her. The stars twinkled over the pointed firs in the hollow and
Diana’s light gleamed through the old gap.

Anne’s horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after
coming home from Queen’s; but if the path set before her feet was to be
narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it.
The joy of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship
were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her
ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!

“‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,’” whispered Anne
softly.
 

Sample text: 134


CHAPTER FIRST


ENGINE 33 was kept in a substantial brick building that stood on a
little hill in a pleasant part of the city. The brass shone so brightly
that you could see your face in it, and not a speck of dust or rust was
to be seen on any part of it, as it stood ready for use at a moment’s
notice. Directly over the shafts hung the harnesses, to be lowered down
upon the horses when they took their places in front of the engine; and
this was the work of an instant.

The floor was just as clean as the engine; and so were all parts of the
building. Three strong beautifully groomed gray horses stood in their
well-kept stalls, ready to dart out at the sound of the gong and fall
into their places before the engine.

Not a boy or girl in that part of the city but thought that Engine 33
was superior to all the other engines in the big city. She was always
the first at a fire, and she could throw a stream higher than any
of the others. One boy made a little verse on the subject, and his
companions thought it very beautiful, for it expressed their views
about Engine 33. This is the verse,—

    “Number Thirty-three
     Is fine as she can be.
     She’s never late
     And plays first-rate.”

Not only did the children think there was no other engine equal to
theirs, but so did Jack the Fire-Dog. Why, it was _his_ engine! Jack
lived in the engine-house and went to all the fires just as the horses
did. He never ventured far from the engine-house, but kept within
hearing of the gong that struck the alarm. How fast he raced back when
he heard that well-known sound, to be ready to start with the engine!
So eager was he to be on hand, that on one occasion when he could not
get the screen door at the head of the stairs open, he went _through_
it. Sometimes in winter Jack was harnessed to a little sled and carried
salt for the firemen to melt the snow on the hydrants, to keep them
clear in case of a fire.

Jack was a dog of no particular breed, spotted black and white like
a coach-dog, but larger and heavier in build. Those who knew Jack
did not care if he were not a well-bred dog, they loved him for his
intelligence and affectionate nature. The children in the neighborhood
were as proud of him as they were of the engine.

Our story opens on a cold evening in winter. The wind had been blowing
fiercely all day, catching up the light snow and scattering it wildly
about, until it was hard to tell whether it were snowing or not, so
full of snow was the sharp air. Toward the latter part of the afternoon
the wind began to go down, but as it grew less the air became colder,
and the mercury fell lower and lower, until it reached zero. It went
even lower than that, and at seven o’clock stood at eight below. A
dreadful night for our brave firemen to work in, but they never fail us.

Below, in the engine-house of Number 33, stands the engine ready for
duty, her shining brass reflecting a hundred-fold the lights that shine
on her. The horses are warm and comfortable in their stalls, and still,
except when one gives an occasional stamp or rubs against the side of
his stall. On the floor above, in their cosey, warm room, the firemen
are assembled. Some are reading, others talking together. One young man
is putting Jack through his tricks, of which he has a long list. He
has just told to what engine he belongs,—not in words, for Jack cannot
speak the human language. When he is asked what is his engine, and
the numbers of several are mentioned, he is silent until Number 33 is
called, then he gives a sharp bark.

This evening no sooner has he given his answer than the gong below
strikes, and in an instant men and dog are on their feet, and on the
way to the floor below. Jack rushes headlong down the long, steep
flight of stairs, while the firemen take a shorter cut by sliding down
the pole. In a very few seconds the horses have taken their places in
front of the engine, the harness is let down and fastened into place.
The fire is started under the boiler of the engine, the driver is in
his seat, the men in their places, and the three splendid grays dash
out of the engine-house, Jack circling about in front of them, almost
crazy with excitement, or running ahead to bark indignantly at any team
that happens to be in their path. Not long does he keep up his circling
and barking, for by the time they are at the foot of the hill the
horses have broken into a run, and Jack has all he can do to keep up
with them. He has worked off his excitement and is ready for business.

Such a stinging, cold night! The engine-wheels crunch the frozen snow
with a sharp, creaking sound, and the warning notes of the bugle ring
out loud and clear on the still air.

Sometimes an answering bark comes from the houses they pass, as the
engine dashes by. No dogs are out on such a night, but they all know
Jack and envy him his position as engine-dog. It is not always such fun
for Jack as they think it is, particularly on such a night as this.
However, Jack has a duty to perform as well as the firemen have, and he
does it just as fearlessly and nobly as they do.

The fire is at one of the extreme ends of the city, a small theatre
in a narrow street where tenement-houses and small shops are crowded
together regardless of regularity,—a court here and a narrow alley-way
there, but every square inch taken up with a building of some kind.
When our engine arrives, it is to find others that have not come from
such a distance hard at work, the deep throbs of the working engines
reaching far through the crisp air.

Engine 33 takes her stand, and while her men are attaching the hose
to the hydrant and preparing for action, Jack, as is his custom,
makes his rounds to see if all is going on as it should. He sees the
horses standing with their legs drawn closely together under them, as
they always do in cold weather, and well blanketed by the men who are
detailed for that purpose. Frozen pools and rivulets are standing on
the sidewalks and streets, and as the water comes out of the hose it is
turned to frozen spray. Jack’s thin coat of hair does not keep out the
cold very well, and he shivers as he steps over the icy ground. There
is no time to be wasted, however, and as soon as he is satisfied that
all is in working order, the Fire-Dog joins his own company. They are
ordered into a tenement-house that adjoins the burning theatre, and
from which smoke is thickly pouring.

The inhabitants of the tenement-house have thrown their bedding and
many other articles from the windows, or carried them down to the
street. Groups of people, lamenting and terrified, are huddled about
their property, hoping to save it. Scantily clothed in their sudden
exit, they shiver and moan in a manner pitiable to behold. Many
children are among the number, either in their mothers’ arms or huddled
together among their household goods, vainly trying to escape from the
biting air.

The men of Engine 33 are ordered to the roof of the tenement-house; and
in they rush, dragging the hose after them, plucky Jack keeping close
behind them. They have no easy task, for the narrow halls and stairways
are filled with smoke that blinds and suffocates them. It is slow work,
too, for they must stop occasionally to take breath at an open window.
Sometimes, too, one of them sinks to the floor, overpowered by the
thick smoke. On they go, however, dragging the long hose after them,
with valiant Jack always close behind them. At last the upper story is
reached, and the skylight through which they must reach the roof is
thrown open. Here, however, Jack stops, and running up to a closed door
sniffs for a moment, and then begins to whine and scratch.

It is only a kind of store-room, without windows or any opening to
admit the light, and is built under the stairway leading to the roof.
It seems impossible that any one could be there, but Jack’s whines and
scratching must mean something, and one of the men throws the door open.

Through the smoke and darkness nothing is seen at first; but in rushes
Jack, pounces upon something in one corner, tugging at it until he
succeeds in dragging it to the door. Then they see what it is,—a child;
and one of the men, the young man who put Jack through his tricks in
the engine-house, picks it up. Through the smoke and darkness they make
out that it is a boy, tall enough for a boy of seven, but how thin and
light! He is either in a stupor from the effects of the suffocating
smoke that filled the close room in which he was found, or else in a
faint. At all events, he lies motionless in the fireman’s arms.

It takes more time to write the event than it took for it to transpire.
The other men mount to the roof through the skylight, while the
man who picked up the boy forces his way through the blinding smoke
down to the street, closely followed by Jack. If it were not for the
responsibility for the boy he discovered, Jack would have followed the
men to the roof, for wherever they went he always followed.

The young fireman bears the motionless form of the boy to the street,
and singles out the group of tenants who had succeeded in escaping in
safety from the tenement-house.

“Which of you has left this child behind?” he sternly asks, looking at
the different family groups crowded together, vainly trying to keep
warm. “Whose is he?”

They are silent, and after waiting in vain for an answer he continues,—

“If you can’t answer, there are those who will know how to make you.
You can’t leave a child shut up like that in an out-of-the-way room
without being called to account.”

“Why, it’s the blind kid!” exclaims one of the men. “I forgot all about
him.”

[Illustration]

“People are not apt to forget their children at such a time,” replies
the fireman, looking about him at the children who are crowding around
their mothers. “This case shall be looked into.”

“He doesn’t belong to any of us,” replies the man.

“How came he to be shut up in that hole under the stairs, then?” asks
the fireman. “If it hadn’t been for the dog, he’d have been dead by
this time.”

“He followed some of the children home,” replies the man, “and has been
sleeping there for a few nights. I don’t know anything about him. I
forgot he was there, or I’d have looked out for him.”

The cold air seems to revive the child, for he stirs and moans.

“It’s the smoke,” says the fireman. “You are all right now, ain’t you,
young chap?”

“Yes,” replies the boy in a faint voice, but he makes no attempt to
rise to his feet.

“I’ll fix you up in good shape,” replies the fireman, carrying him
toward the engine. A wagon with blankets for the horses stands near
by, and a few are still left. One of these the fireman wraps about the
boy, and lays him on the floor of the wagon.

“Watch him, Jack!” he says to the Fire-Dog; and in an instant he is
back in the tenement-house to join his company on the roof and help
them fight the fire.

Faithful Jack cast a longing glance after the fireman’s retreating
figure, for it was the first time he had failed to follow at his heels;
then with a deep sigh he turned to the duty before him. With one bound
to the shaft of the wagon and another to the seat, he jumped down
beside the still form rolled up in the blanket.

Jack had heard the conversation between the fireman and the man from
the tenement-house, and he understood that this was a child without
friends or home, and with another sigh of disappointment he crept up
to the little figure that lay so still in the bottom of the wagon. The
blanket was drawn over the boy’s head, but Jack pushed his nose in to
see whether the little fellow were alive, he lay so quietly. He found
he was alive, though, for he started when Jack’s nose touched his face.
He felt very cold, and the Fire-Dog crept closer still and lay beside
him, hoping to add some warmth to the cold little figure.

For a time the two lay silently there, Jack keeping his intelligent
eyes open to everything that went on. He shivered with the cold, but
still kept his post. The horses stood with heads drooping and tails
hugged closely to them, and the deep, loud thuds of the working engines
stationed near the burning building seemed echoed by those at work
farther off. After a while the glare and showers of sparks ceased,
and dark volumes of smoke rose in their stead. Then the Fire-Dog knew
that the fire was out, and that Engine 33’s men would before long
be released. The engines still played upon the smouldering embers,
however, and it was some time before he was relieved.

They took the boy with them to the engine-house, for they knew that
the homeless tenants of the empty house could not take care of him,
even if they had been inclined. He could stay at the engine-house that
night, they decided, and in the morning they would hand him over to
the public charities. So he was wrapped up well and brought home in
the wagon, while Jack ran along by the side of the engine. Jack always
started out, as we have seen, bounding and circling in front of the
horses, but he came home sedately. The excitement was over, and he was
as tired as the men were.

They brought the boy into the engine-house and carried him up to the
warm room where we first made Jack’s acquaintance. He was placed in a
chair and the blanket taken off.

“Now let’s see what you look like,” said the fresh-faced young man who
had rescued him. “How are you now?”

“I’m all right,” replied the boy.

“Well, that’s hearty,” said the man.

He did not look hearty, though. His face was very pale and thin, and
he did not look about him as children do who have the use of their eyes.

“Can’t you see anything at all? Can you see me?” asked the young man.

“I can see a little mite of light if the lamps are lighted and if the
sun shines very bright,” replied the boy.

“I suppose you are hungry, aren’t you?”

“Not very,” replied the boy.

“When did you eat last? What did you have for supper?”

“I didn’t have any,” replied the boy.

“Well, what did you have for dinner, then?”

“I didn’t have any dinner, either.”

“Didn’t have any dinner, either?” repeated the young fireman. “When did
you eat last, for goodness’ sake?”

“Some of the children in the house brought me some of their breakfast.
They were very kind to me.”

“Well, that beats the Dutch!” exclaimed the young man. “You sit right
there till I come back!” and he rushed out of the room as speedily as
he answered the summons of the big gong below. In a short time he was
back with his arms full of packages which he proceeded to open hastily.
In one were sandwiches of thick rolls with pieces of ham in between,
in another a loaf of bread, some butter in another, and a small can of
milk in another. These he proceeded to place on a small table which he
drew up before the blind boy.

“There, begin on that,” he said, placing one of the sandwiches in the
boy’s hands.

“Thank you, sir,” said the boy; “you are very good.”

“You needn’t call me sir,” replied the young man; “my name is Reordan.”

“You don’t intend to have the kid eat all that stuff, do you, Reordan?”
asked one of the other firemen.

“Why, he hasn’t eaten anything since morning, and this such a cold
day,” replied Reordan.

“That’s no reason why you should kill him. He ought to come around to
it gradually. That’s the way they do when people are starved.”

So the boy was given another sandwich followed by a glass of milk, and
the firemen and Jack made a lunch off the rest. Then a bed was made up
for the boy in a snug corner, and he was covered with plenty of warm
clothing. He was so comfortable, from the warm air of the room and
the hearty meal, that it was not many minutes before he was in a deep
sleep. The Fire-Dog seated himself near by and watched him earnestly.

“I’d give a good deal to know what Jack is thinking about,” said one of
the men.

“He’s probably thinking over what’s best to do for the kid, and will
settle it in his mind before he goes to bed himself,” replied Reordan.

Jack responded by an appreciative glance and a wag of his tail, that
said as plainly as words could have done,—

“That is just it!”


CHAPTER SECOND


THE next morning when the firemen were up and dressed, the blind boy
was still asleep. He looked even paler by daylight than he had the
night before, and his thin cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes
gave him a pathetic look.

“It would be a pity to send the blind kid off while he looks like
that. Let’s put some flesh on his bones and some color into his cheeks
first,” said soft-hearted Reordan.

“How do you propose to manage? Taking care of kids and running
fire-engines don’t go very well together,” said the captain.

“The work sha’n’t suffer,” replied Reordan. “A chap of his age, and
blind at that, that has looked after himself, won’t need much tending,
and the little he’ll need to eat won’t lighten my pocket much.”

“Well, then, keep him for a day or so if you like, I’ve no objections,”
replied the captain. “Here’s something toward his keep;” and he placed
a bill in Reordan’s hand.

“We’ll all chip in,” said another. “Here, Jack, pass around the hat for
the blind kid.”

The Fire-Dog took the hat in his mouth with great alacrity, and gravely
went from one to another of the men, each one of whom put in some
change.

“Reordan shall be treasurer of the blind kid’s fund,” said one.

“There’s enough already to buy more than he can eat in a week,” replied
Reordan, shaking up the hat to enjoy the jingling sound of the coins.

“Please will you show me where I can wash?” asked a gentle voice; and
there stood the blind kid, who had approached unnoticed. “If you will
show me once, I can find it for myself afterwards.”

“Here you are, young man,” replied Reordan, leading him to the sink
where the men washed. “Here’s the water-faucet, and here’s the soap;
and while you’re making your toilet I’ll step out and fetch your
breakfast.”

“Why not take him along with us?” asked one of the men.

“He isn’t in just the rig for a cold morning,” replied Reordan. “The
looks of the thing, to say nothing of his own feelings, goes against
it. Wait till he has a hat and coat. I’ll fetch his breakfast, and
while he’s eating it we’ll go for ours.”

“And when we come back we’ll hear his story, and see what account he
has to give of himself,” said another.

The boy made himself quite tidy, considering the poor clothes he had
on; and the men, after seating him at the table with a good breakfast
before him, went out for theirs.

How good it did taste to the poor little waif! Only hot coffee and
buttered rolls, but it was a feast for the poor child, who for several
weeks had eaten his meals whenever he could get them, and little enough
at that.

As the boy sat contentedly eating his breakfast, a slight sound near
his feet attracted his attention. “Is that you, Jack?” he quickly asked.

Jack replied by licking his hand and pressing closely to his side.

“Dear Jack!” said the blind boy, fondly laying his cheek upon the
faithful dog’s head. “If you hadn’t nestled so closely to me last night
and kept me warm, I believe I should have frozen to death. Here, you
shall have part of my breakfast, I don’t need it all;” and he offered
the Fire-Dog a generous piece of his buttered roll.

Jack took the offering very reluctantly, as if he would have preferred
to have the blind boy eat it himself, but accepted it in order not to
hurt his new friend’s feelings.

“You eat so slowly, I don’t believe it tastes so good to you as it does
to me, Jack,” said the blind boy, as Jack slowly chewed the soft roll,
“and it has butter on it too. I should think you would like that.”

Jack was trying hard to dispose of a mouthful his kind little friend
had just given him when the firemen returned from their breakfast. In
fact, Jack _did_ like the bread, but he thought he ought not to take
the blind boy’s breakfast. He looked really ashamed of himself when the
men entered and Reordan remarked,—

“Why, you mustn’t give your breakfast away to Jack, young chap, you
must eat it yourself. We’ve brought him some leavings from the place
where we take our meals, that he likes a great deal better than what
you’ve got. Aren’t you hungry, kid? Don’t you like your breakfast?”

“Yes, indeed,” replied the boy, quickly. “It tastes splendid; but Jack
was so good to me last night that I wanted to give him some of it.”

“Don’t you worry about him, Sonny,” replied one of the men. “We’ll look
out for Jack all right;” and he opened a package of bones and scraps
of meat which he set before Jack.

“Now, if you’ve had all you want to eat,” said the captain, who just
then entered, “suppose you give an account of yourself.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the boy.

“Well,” said the captain, after waiting a moment in vain for the boy to
begin his story. “Where do you come from, and what’s your name? Haven’t
you got any father and mother?”

“My name is William,” replied the boy, “William Blake. I haven’t got
any father. He used to go to sea, and his ship got lost and they were
all drowned.”

“Haven’t you got any mother?” asked the captain.

The boy hesitated a moment. Then his lips began to tremble with
emotion, and after making several attempts to answer, he put his hands
before his sightless eyes and burst into violent weeping.

The tender-hearted men were overcome at the sight of the child’s
grief. He tried to stifle the sobs that shook his slender frame, but
his grief was too great for him to master. The brave men who never
hesitated to enter a burning building to rescue those who were in
danger, who never thought of their own lives when those of others were
menaced, broke down to see a little blind boy crying for his mother.

“Is your mother dead too?” asked the captain in a low voice, a great
contrast to his usual hearty tones.

“No, I don’t think she is. I don’t know,” sobbed the boy.

“Don’t you know where she is?” asked the captain, gently.

“No, sir,” replied the boy, trying hard to speak distinctly. “She fell
down, and she couldn’t speak to me nor move, and then they carried her
off in a wagon.”

“Don’t you know where they took her?”

“No, sir, they didn’t say anything about it.”

“Wasn’t there any one to look after you?”

“No, sir. There wasn’t any one who knew me.”

“What did you do then? Where did you go?”

“I didn’t know where to go. Some children came along and found me
crying, and they were real good to me. They said they knew a place
where I could stay until my mother came back. So they took me home with
them, and put me in a little room there was at the top of the house.”

“How did you manage to keep warm in this cold weather?”

“The children found some things to put over me. They got some hay from
a stable and made me a bed. It wasn’t very cold after I got used to it.”

“They probably took his mother to a hospital,” said the captain,
“unless she was—” He didn’t like to finish his sentence, for he had not
the heart to tell the poor boy that his mother might be dead.

“Come, little chap,” he continued, “dry your eyes and put a good face
on the matter. We will try to hunt up your mother, and we’ll look out
for you.”

“This is no place for a child,” said the captain later to the men. “You
can keep him here a day or two, and then you must turn him over to the
charities. Perhaps they’ll find his mother; at any rate, it is their
business to attend to such cases.”

The men thought this doctrine rather hard, and grumbled at it somewhat
among themselves. When, however, the next day, the captain brought in
a large bundle, saying briefly, as he laid it down, “Here is something
for the kid,” they changed their minds. The bundle contained a warm
overcoat, cap, and mittens.

The blind boy began at once to show the effects of the kind treatment
he now received. A better color came into his pale face and he grew
stronger every day. With this improvement of his body, his mind, too,
underwent a change. His face became cheerful and happy, and he was soon
playing about the engine-house with Jack.

“He begins to seem something like a child,” remarked Reordan one
evening, as Jack and the blind boy were playing together at “hide and
seek,” and the boy’s laugh rang out joyously whenever Jack found out
his hiding-place. “If he could only see, he’d be all right.”

It was astonishing how much the blind boy could do without the aid of
eyes, and in how many ways he succeeded in making himself useful. He
was never so happy as when he found he could do something for his kind
friends, and they often called upon him for little services that they
could have done much more quickly themselves, in order that he might
have the satisfaction of thinking he was of some use to them.

William was too long a name for such a small boy, in the opinion of the
firemen, so they used Billy instead. Several days passed, and yet Billy
was not turned over to the charities. An engine-house seems a strange
place for a child’s home, but Billy soon thought it the pleasantest
place in the world. Whenever the alarm sounded, Billy was as excited
even as Jack over it, and after the engine had clattered out of the
house, and the last sound of wheels and horses’ hoofs and Jack’s
barking had died away in the distance, Billy waited contentedly alone;
and every one, including Jack, was glad to see Billy’s face light up
with pleasure on their return. It was a touch of home life that was
very pleasant to these sturdy men who were denied the privilege of a
home.

“You ought not to keep the boy cooped up in this hot room all the
time,” remarked the captain one day. “Put on his things and send him
out on the sidewalk in the sun. No harm can come to him if he keeps in
front of the engine-house.”

So Billy had on his new coat and cap and mittens, and was led down to
the sidewalk, where the sun was shining brightly.

“Watch him, Jack!” was Reordan’s order, as the Fire-Dog followed them.

So Billy and Jack walked up and down in front of the engine-house,
Billy with his hand resting on Jack’s neck, and the intelligent dog
marching him back and forth with the regularity of a sentinel on guard.
The fresh air brought the color into Billy’s cheeks, and he looked very
happy and bright. When they had kept up this exercise for about half
an hour, two persons appeared, at whose approach Jack showed decided
symptoms of pleasure. He wagged his tail very fast, and whined with joy.

The new-comers were a middle-aged gentleman and a little boy somewhat
younger than Billy,—a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy, with a very
independent air, and he carried a little basket in his hand. The
gentleman was the little boy’s grandfather. I wish I could describe
him as he really was, but the nearest I can come to it is to say that
he was just the kind every boy and girl would choose if they had a
whole world full of grandpapas to choose from. Such a pleasant smile
when he looked at you! And such a pleasant voice when he spoke to you!
Why, you felt happier all the rest of the day after meeting him if
he only shook hands with you and said, “How do you do?” His laugh was
even pleasanter still, and he laughed very often; and when he was not
laughing his eyes were, they had such a happy, cheerful expression.

Billy could not _see_ the pleasant face, but he could hear the pleasant
voice, and those who have not the use of their eyes have something
within them that tells them how people look. So Billy formed a picture
in his mind of the little boy’s grandpapa, and Billy smiled too when
the little boy’s grandpapa spoke, as everybody else did.

“Jack, Jack, I’ve brought something nice for you, old fellow,” said
the little boy, whose name was Sam, and who had been eying Billy very
intently.

“What little boy is this?” asked Sam’s grandpapa. “Seems to me this is
a new face.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the blind boy. “I am Billy.”

“Oh. You are Billy! Well, where did you come from?”

“It’s a boy we found one night at the North End, Mr. Ledwell, and he
is blind,” said Reordan, who stood in the door of the engine-house and
now approached, touching his hat respectfully. “He didn’t have any one
to look after him, and some children took him in tow and hid him in a
kind of closet at the top of the tenement-house they lived in. When the
house got on fire, they cleared out so sudden that nobody thought of
the blind kid. If it hadn’t been for Jack here, he’d ’a’ been smothered
in a short time, the smoke was so thick. It isn’t the first life Jack
has saved.”

“Good old boy,” said Mr. Ledwell, patting the faithful dog’s head;
while Jack wagged his tail gently and looked modestly down, for it
always embarrassed him to be praised for what he considered his duty.

Meanwhile Sam was unpacking his basket, and Jack tried to be polite and
not to stare greedily at the tempting contents. He could not resist
the temptation, however, of looking out of the corner of one eye. What
he saw fairly made his mouth water. There were slices of cold meat,
none of your thin delicate ones, but nice _thick_ slices, just the kind
every dog likes, and, most delicious of all, there was a large bone
with tender morsels of meat on it, to say nothing of several mouthfuls
of gristle. Jack couldn’t help lapping his chops, as he thought of the
good time he would have gnawing that bone and cracking it to get at the
rich tasting marrow inside.

Sam handed Jack a slice of the meat, and he gave it just one roll with
his tongue and then swallowed it whole. Meat tastes better to dogs
eaten in that way,—they think it takes the taste out of it to chew it
too much. Another and still another slice followed, while Sam looked
contentedly on, enjoying the operation as much as the dog did.

“I think you’d better save the rest for his dinner, Reordan,” remarked
Sam, with his decided air. “He can have this bone, too, then, and I
have brought some of the cake he likes so much. You had better keep
that for his dessert;” and Sam took out a package of cake neatly
wrapped in paper.

The crumbs that remained in the basket were emptied upon the snow in
front of the engine-house, and the crumbs from a roll added to them.
Several sparrows seated on the roof of the building peered anxiously
over, intending to seize the first opportunity that presented itself to
eat them.

“Don’t let the sparrows eat all of them, Reordan,” said Sam, who had
very strict ideas of justice; “they must save some for the pigeons.
How’s the little lame pigeon?”

“He seemed to be all right the last time I saw him,” replied Reordan.

“Does Dick the Scrapper fight him away as much as ever?” asked Sam.

“Well, yes, he does hustle him around considerable when they are
feeding and he gets in the way; but that’s always the way with animals,
you know. The strongest ones get the first chance, and the others have
to take back seats.”

“I think it’s a very mean way,” said Sam. “I should think you’d stand
there with a stick and keep the Scrapper off while the lame one eats.”

“Oh, we’ll look after the little lame fellow, never fear. He’s as fat
as a partridge. He gets tamer every day, too. Yesterday he lit right on
my hand and stayed there quite a spell.”

“I wish he’d come around now,” said Sam.

“He will turn up very likely before you go. They come around pretty
often. The sparrows get ahead of them, though, they are so cute.”

Meanwhile Sam’s grandpapa was talking to the captain about the little
blind boy who had been so suddenly thrown upon their hands. Sam knew
what they were talking about, and he felt sure that his grandpapa would
find some way to make the blind boy happy, for Grandpapa could do
anything, he thought. Sam felt very sorry that the little boy could not
see, and he looked at him a long time. At last he said,—

“Hallo, Billy!”

“Hallo!” answered Billy in his soft voice; and the acquaintance was
begun.

“Here come the pigeons,” said Reordan, as a flock of birds came
sweeping around the corner of the street, and alighted in front of the
children. They at once began gobbling up the crumbs scattered for them,
while the sparrows flew down, and darting in among them, seized upon
the largest ones right from under the pigeons’ very eyes, flying up to
the roof to eat them in safety.

Among the pigeons was a speckled black and white one with very pink
feet; but one of his feet he kept drawn up against his soft feathers
and hopped about on the other one. He did not have a very fair chance
with the other stronger pigeons, for they crowded him out of the way,
and even pecked him when he attempted to seize upon a piece of bread.
The most quarrelsome of the pigeons was a handsome dark blue one with
rainbow feathers on his neck that glistened in the sunlight. This was
Dick the Scrapper. He had a very bold air, as if he had a better
right to the food than the others had. Sam was very indignant at his
treatment of the lame pigeon, and suddenly drove them all off except
the little lame one. The little speckled pigeon seemed to understand
what this was done for, and remained behind and ate a hearty meal. The
others were not much afraid of Sam, for they were very tame, but every
time they attempted to alight he would shoo them away. This he kept
up until he thought that the lame pigeon had eaten all he wanted, and
then he allowed the others to return. He picked up the lame pigeon and
it nestled contentedly in his arm. Billy caressed it too, and the two
children began to talk together, while Jack stood near by, wagging his
tail approvingly.

At last Mr. Ledwell came back to where the children were playing with
the lame pigeon, and they heard him say to the captain,—

“This will do very well for a little while, but of course you can’t
keep him here. We must find some other place for him.”

These words made Billy feel very sad, for he had become much attached
to his new home, and thought that if he were sent away, he would be
homeless and friendless again. The little pigeon who was lying in his
arms heard it too, and his bright eyes saw the look of disappointment
that came over the blind boy’s face. Jack, too, heard it, and made up
his mind that Billy should not leave the engine-house unless he went
too.

“I rather think that as I was the means of saving the boy’s life, I
have a right to say something about the matter,” said Jack to himself.
“They all think a great deal of me, and if I say he shall stay, I
rather think he _will_ stay.”


CHAPTER THIRD


“GRANDPAPA,” said Sam, as the two walked home together, “isn’t it too
bad about Billy?”

“It certainly is,” replied Grandpapa.

“Something must be done about it,” said Sam; then he walked silently
for a while, thinking very hard. At last he said,—

“Grandpapa, God made me. Did the same man make you?”

“Yes,” replied Grandpapa, “I suppose he did.”

“Don’t you know for certain?” asked Sam, for Grandpapa’s eyes were
smiling hard.

“Oh, yes,” replied Grandpapa, “of course I do.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking it over,” said Sam, “and I’ll tell you what
I’m going to do. I’m going to pray to God every night to make Billy
see.”

“It will be a very good plan,” replied Grandpapa.

“You see I always pray for what I want most at Christmas time,” said
Sam.

“And it comes, doesn’t it?” asked Grandpapa.

“Yes,” replied Sam, “it always comes. I prayed real hard for a pony
last Christmas, and I got one, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Grandpapa, his eyes still smiling as he watched the
earnest face of his grandson.

“I asked for a black pony with a star on his forehead, and it came just
exactly right. So, you see,” continued Sam, “that if I ask God every
night to make Billy see, He will be sure to do it.”

“I hope so,” said Grandpapa.

“Why, it wouldn’t be half so hard as it was to hustle around to find
just the kind of pony I asked for.”

“So I should think,” replied Grandpapa. “Black ponies with white stars
on their foreheads are not so easy to find.”

“No,” said Sam, thoughtfully, “I know it. How long will it be before
Christmas comes, Grandpapa?”

“Only a very short time,—about two weeks.”

“Well, I shall just tell God that He needn’t bother about that
dog-cart,” said Sam, with his determined nod. “I shall tell Him that I
would rather He would make Billy see.”

“That is a good idea, Sam,” said Grandpapa. “I know you would enjoy
having poor Billy see as you do, much more than you would to have your
dog-cart.”

“Yes,” replied Sam with a little sigh, for he had been looking forward
for a long time to the pleasure of driving his pony in a dog-cart. “I
can ride him just as well as not.”

By this time they had reached home, and Sam hurried up the steps, he
was so eager to tell Grandmamma about Billy. Sam’s papa and mamma were
travelling in Europe, with his little sister Anne, and he was staying
with his grandparents. He was so fond of them that he was not at all
lonely.

“I miss Anne very much, and I should like to see Papa and Mamma,” he
had remarked to his nurse Mary one day; “but grandpapas and grandmammas
let you do a great many more things than papas and mammas do.”

“Oh, you mustn’t say that,” Mary had replied.

“Mary,” Sam had said very earnestly, “how would you like to be spanked
with a hair-brush?”

Mary had made no reply to this argument; and Sam, in response to her
silence, had said with the positive air of one who has had experience,—

“Well, then!”

On this day Sam found his grandmamma seated in her sunny sewing-room,
and he was in such a hurry to tell her all about Billy that he gave her
a very confused idea of the matter. The fire and Jack and the little
blind boy became so mixed up in his story that it was some time before
she understood the case.

Now Sam’s grandmamma was just exactly as nice for a grandmamma as his
grandpapa was for a grandpapa, and Sam loved one just as well as the
other. “The only difference is that Grandmamma was never a little boy
like me, same as Grandpapa was,” Sam used to say.

“We must see what can be done for the poor child,” said Grandmamma when
Sam had finished his story.

Then Sam told his plan about asking God to make Billy see, and
Grandmamma thought it an excellent plan, only that perhaps it couldn’t
be brought about by Christmas, because the time was very near.

“But don’t you see, Grandmamma,” said Sam, “that if God doesn’t have to
hunt around for the dog-cart, it will be a great deal easier to make
Billy see?”

So, when Sam went to bed that night, he said his simple prayer in this
way,—

“Oh, dear God, you needn’t bother about that dog-cart, if you will
only make poor Billy see as I do; and please take care of Papa and
Mamma, and don’t let the ship tip over; and take care of Grandpapa and
Grandmamma too, and make Sam a good boy.”

“You haven’t prayed for your little sister,” said Grandmamma, as Sam’s
prayer came to a sudden end.

“Oh, Anne sleeps with Nora, she’s all right,” replied Sam, confidently.

The next day Sam said to his grandpapa,—

“Can’t I go to the park to-day to feed the birds and squirrels?”

“I think you can,” replied Grandpapa, “and how should you like to take
Billy too?”

“Why, he can’t see, you know, so it wouldn’t be any fun for him,” said
Sam.

“But _you_ can see,” said Grandpapa, “and you can lend him your eyes.”

Sam looked so puzzled at this that his grandpapa explained: “You can
tell him what you see, and he can imagine how everything looks. He
will see the picture with his mind instead of with his eyes. That is
imagination.”

“It is a very strange thing,” said Sam, thoughtfully.

“You see that blind people think so much about what they cannot see,
that they make a great many pictures in their minds. If they were not
able to do that, they would be very lonely.”

Then Sam hurried down to ask Cook to give him some bread for the birds,
and to fill a basket with nuts for the squirrels. He also took some
canary and hemp seeds in a little package. By the time this was done,
the sleigh had driven up to the door, and Sam and his grandpapa started
on their expedition, Sam throwing kisses to his grandmamma at the
window so long as the house was in sight. Then they turned the corner
and soon reached the engine-house.

Billy’s pale face grew quite rosy when he was told of the sleigh-ride
he was to have, and in a moment his warm coat and cap were on and he
was led to the sleigh by Sam, who took great care of him for fear he
should make a misstep. The Fire-Dog followed closely at his heels, and
watched him put into the big sleigh and securely tucked in with the
warm fur robe.

“Can’t Jack go too?” asked Sam, as he saw the wistful expression in the
faithful dog’s eyes.

“Certainly, if he will,” replied Grandpapa.

Jack, however, was not the dog to neglect his duties, and in spite of
Sam’s and Billy’s alluring calls, he gently but firmly wagged his tail,
to express his regret at being obliged to refuse their invitation. As
they drove off, he looked mournfully after them so long as the sleigh
was in sight, then he gave a sigh of disappointment and lay down in
front of the engine-house, where he could enjoy the passing, and
occasionally pass the time of day with some dog friend, or make the
acquaintance of some stranger passing through the city, for Jack was a
social dog. Here, too, he was within hearing of the gong.

Meanwhile the sleigh continued on its way to the park, the faces of the
two little boys beaming with pleasure,—Billy’s at the unusual treat
of a sleigh-ride, and Sam’s from watching the happiness of the little
blind boy.

Sam was so eager to point out to Billy everything of interest to him,
that he was kept busy describing the objects of interest they passed.
The grandpapa’s face reflected the happiness in the two boys’ faces,
and his pleasant smile grew very tender as he saw the delight of the
blind boy in the scenes his poor blind eyes could not see.

When, as they passed a group of merry, shouting boys building a snow
fort which Sam reported faithfully to his little friend, and Billy,
quite excited at Sam’s description had wistfully asked, “Are they all
seeing children, Sam?” Sam, greatly distressed at the question, had
replied, “There is one fellow that looks kind of blind,—he’s having
an awfully good time, though;” then Grandpapa’s smile grew more tender
still, and he told the two boys about the schools where those who could
not see were taught to do whatever those who could see did.

“Can they play the way the seeing children do?” asked Billy, eagerly.

“Yes,” replied Grandpapa, “and we will send you to one of them.”

Billy was silent, and seemed to be thinking about something.

“Should you not like to go, Billy?” asked Sam’s grandpapa. “The
children are very happy there.”

“I would rather find my mother,” replied Billy, with a quiver of the
lips.

“We will find her, never fear,” replied kind-hearted Mr. Ledwell,
who could never bear to see anybody unhappy; and he began a story so
interesting that Billy was soon listening intently and had forgotten
for the time about the dear mother whom he wanted so much to see. By
the time the story was ended, the houses were farther and farther
apart, then snow-covered fields were passed, and Sam was kept busy
in describing the frozen ponds where boys and girls were skating and
playing, and the hillsides down which they were coasting. Then woods
with real forest trees appeared, and Sam explained that they were now
in the park. Here and there a gray squirrel’s bright eyes peeped down
upon the sleigh, and Sam reported just how they whisked their bushy
tails and ran from bough to bough, occasionally stopping to take a peep.

As they went farther into the park, a colony of sparrows would now and
then fly up from a clump of bushes, and hurry away as if the sleigh
contained a party of ferocious hunters, instead of two kind little boys
bringing them food. They took care to keep the sleigh in sight, for Sam
and his basket were old friends, and they knew the feast in store for
them. So they followed at a distance, for sparrows like to consider
themselves martyrs, and to act as if they were a persecuted set. This
is not to be wondered at, when we remember the way they have been
treated. Their nests have been torn down, they have been driven from
one place to another, and they have been made to feel that they are not
wanted anywhere.

Suddenly there arose on the still, frosty air discordant cries, and Sam
exclaimed,—

“There come the blue jays, Billy! Oh, you don’t know how handsome they
are, with their tufts standing straight up on their heads, and their
beautiful blue and white bodies and wings!”

“Are they as big as the pigeons?” asked Billy, for he had held the
little black and white lame pigeon in his arms and knew just what size
they were.

“Not quite so large as a pigeon,” replied Sam, “but fully as large as a
robin. They are awfully quarrelsome fellows, though; just hear how hard
they are scolding now.”

“Will they come and eat the crumbs?” asked Billy.

“Yes, and get the biggest share of them too,” replied Sam.

“We had better stop here,” said Mr. Ledwell, as they came to an open,
sunny spot.

So the sleigh stopped, and Sam and his grandpapa got out and helped
Billy out, who looked as happy and eager as Sam did. He did not look
about him, though, as Sam did, and see that the sparrows had stationed
themselves on neighboring trees, all ready to begin their feast so soon
as the crumbs were scattered. Neither did he see the bright flashes
of blue as the jays alighted on the trees near by, nor the tame and
nimble squirrels who came closer than the birds, hopping over the snow
to Sam’s very feet. All these things Sam explained, however, and Billy
understood.

Billy, too, threw the crumbs, and held nuts in his hand for the
squirrels, laughing with delight as he felt the trusting little
creatures eat from his fingers.

All at once arose a blithe song of “Chickadee-dee-dee-dee;” and a flock
of little chickadees came flying up, quite out of breath with their
hurry.

[Illustration]

“Chickadee-dee-dee-dee,” they all cried together, as they bustled about
to pick up what crumbs they could; and their song said as plainly as
words could have done,—

“Are we too late? I do hope you have left some for us.”

They were so sweet-tempered about it, not even losing temper when the
greedy sparrows darted in and seized crumbs from under their very
beaks, that it was impossible not to love them.

“Such dear little black caps as they have!” said Sam. “Here, you great
greedy jay, you let that little fellow’s crumbs alone!”

A blue jay had snatched a crumb away from one of the little chickadees,
but the chickadee only replied blithely, “Chickadee-dee-dee-dee!” which
in bird language meant: “No matter! Plenty more to be had! A little
thing like that does not matter.”

This both the little boys understood the chickadee to say, for those
who love animals learn to understand much of their language.

Then arose a hoarse cry of “Caw! caw! caw!” and several coal-black
crows flew down at a distance. They did not come boldly into the midst
of the group of feeding birds, because they preferred always to conduct
their business with great secrecy. One would occasionally walk on the
outskirts of the party with an air of great indifference, pretending
not to see what was going on; then suddenly he would dart in their
midst and seize upon a particularly large crumb, and, hurrying off with
it, stand with his back to the others, eating it in the slyest manner,
as if he expected at any moment to have it taken away from him.

There was one bird that even Sam’s bright eyes did not see. He had a
timid look, as if he could not make friends so easily as the social
chickadees. He crept along a large tree that grew near the spot where
the birds and squirrels were feeding, and creeping in the same cautious
manner on the under side of a large bough that stretched out toward
the spot, hung head downward, watching intently what went on beneath
him. None of the birds took the slightest notice of him, but his quick
eyes glanced at them all, and finally rested on the face of the blind
boy, who patiently listened to the explanations of the kind friend who
loaned him the use of his eyes.

This shy little bird who watched the two boys so narrowly, was the
nuthatch. As soon as the sleigh had driven away, the nuthatch came down
from the tree, creeping along the trunk, head downward, and seized upon
the fine kernel of a nut a squirrel was eating.

The chickadees were loudly singing the praises of the visitors who
had brought them such a delicious treat. Even the blue jays, who were
usually very chary of their praise, had a pleasant word for their
friend Sam, who so often brought them food.

“There was a strange boy with him,” cawed an old crow. “Who knows
anything about him?”

“He was not a seeing child,” chirped the nuthatch. “He could not see
the blue sky, nor the trees, nor any of us. Who can he be?”

“We know all about him,” twittered the sparrows. “It is the blind boy
who lives in the engine-house. Fire-Jack saved his life; we see him
very often.”

Then an incessant twittering arose from the sparrows, who were in such
a hurry to tell all they knew that they all talked at once.


CHAPTER FOURTH


AFTER the two boys had driven off to the park to feed the birds, Jack,
as we have seen, watched the sleigh so long as it was in sight. Then he
lay down in a sunny spot in front of the engine-house door, where he
would be warm and at the same time see the passing. Dogs, of course,
interested him most, and this was such a thoroughfare that he saw a
good many of them.

The dogs that interested him the most were those from out of town who
were passing through the city, following a carriage or team. It was
very pleasant to meet an old acquaintance in that way, and exchange a
few words with him, for Jack was such a business dog that he allowed
himself few pleasures, and did not have the opportunity of roaming
about the city that dogs enjoy so much. Out-of-town dogs were very
interesting because they didn’t take on any airs, and often told him
things about their country homes that he liked to hear.

The most irritating of all dogs are the dogs that are in carriages.
They take on a very superior air that all dogs who are not driving
dislike particularly. In fact, as they pass, they often make insulting
remarks to the less fortunate dogs who go on foot. Also dogs who are
driving are very jealous of others who are enjoying the same privilege,
and often talk most impertinently to one another.

Several dogs in carriages passed while Jack lay in the door of the
engine-house, and they either looked straight ahead and turned up their
noses, pretending not to see him, or else they made some insolent
remark. Jack paid no attention whatever to them, knowing that nothing
would irritate them so much as to find that their impertinence had no
effect upon him.

A large, amiable farm-dog following a charcoal wagon particularly
interested the Fire-Dog. He stopped a few minutes in order to tell the
little news he had, which was that the hens were on a strike and had
refused to lay any more until they were furnished with warmer quarters.

“That accounts for the high price of eggs,” said Jack; “I thought
something was wrong. Well, I hope they will get what they want. Give
them the compliments of Jack the Fire-Dog, and tell them to _stick_.”

“There is one other piece of news,” said the farm-dog. “One of my
neighbors is missing. He is a little yellow dog with a black pug nose,
and answers to the name of Toby. Followed his team into the city with a
load of wood one day last week and hasn’t been seen since. If you come
across him, let us know, will you? The city is awfully confusing to
country dogs.”

“I will be on the lookout for him,” said Jack. “‘Yellow dog with a
black pug nose, answers to the name of Toby.’ Say,” continued Jack, as
the other was starting to run after his team, “what shall I do with him
if I happen to find him, which isn’t at all likely?”

“Keep him till I come by next week, or send him home if he knows the
way;” and the farm-dog ran after his team, that was now nearly out of
sight.

For a while nothing of especial interest happened to divert the
Fire-Dog. He took several naps, keeping one eye open to see what was
going on about him. Suddenly he started and opened both eyes. A group
of children were coming toward him, one of them leading a dog by a
string. Something about the children attracted Jack’s attention. They
were not very warmly clothed for the season of the year, but they
seemed happy and good-natured. They were evidently very fond of their
dog, for they stopped often to pat him and speak to him.

“Where have I seen those children?” asked Jack of himself. “I am sure I
have seen them before;” and he tried hard to recall their faces.

“I have it!” he exclaimed at last. “It was the night of the fire when
we found the blind kid, and they are the children who looked after him.”

He looked at the dog the children were leading. “‘Yellow dog with a
black pug nose, answers to the name of Toby.’ Well, who would have
thought I should hear from him so soon? Hallo, Toby! is that you?”

“Yes,” replied Toby; “but who are you, and how do you happen to know my
name?”

Jack quickly arose and stepped up to the little yellow dog. The
children good-naturedly waited for them to exchange the time of day,
during which time Jack managed to explain to Toby his interview with
the large farm-dog. “I did not expect to hear from you so soon,” said
Jack, “but now that I have, we must make our plans in a hurry. I
suppose you want to go back to your old home?”

“Of course I do. After having a whole town to roam about in, it isn’t
very pleasant to be tied up in an old shed.”

“Why didn’t you run away?” asked Jack.

“I wasn’t sure of my way. It is terribly confusing to a country dog to
find his way about in a city. Besides, these children are very good to
me, and I was afraid of falling into worse hands.”

“You know how to slip your collar, I suppose?” asked Jack.

“Sometimes I can, but this strap is pretty tight,” replied Toby.

“I see that your education has been neglected, so I will give you a few
instructions given me by an old bull-dog, Boxer by name, who could slip
any collar that was ever invented.”

“I should be very glad to hear them,” replied little Toby.

“Well, first you back out just as far as your rope will allow you to
go. Then you gradually work your head from side to side, with your
chin well up in the air, kind of wriggling your head free. If your
collar is tight, that doesn’t always work; so next you lie flat on your
back, keeping your nose as high up as you can get it. You can kind of
ease it up with your fore feet, too. You do just as I’ve told you and
you’ll find yourself free in time. I stump any one to make a collar
that these rules won’t work on.”

“I’ll do my best,” said little Toby.

“The bull-dog I told you of, did a thing once that I wouldn’t have
believed if I hadn’t known it to be a fact. He had slipped so many
collars that they had a sort of harness made for him with a strap that
went back of his fore legs. Well, one morning they found that he had
slipped that. It beats the Dutch how he managed to do it, but he did
it all right. It took him all night to do it, and in the morning they
found him all used up, and lying as if he were dead. He was quite
an old dog then, and not so strong as he used to be, but you know
bull-dogs never give up anything they undertake.”

“Did he get well?” asked Toby, much interested.

“I’ll tell you. As I said before, he lay like a dead dog, and it was
warm and sunny out of doors, so they carried him out and laid him in
the sun. After a while he seemed to take an interest in things about
him,—wagged his tail when they spoke to him and all that. Bull-dogs are
awfully affectionate, you know. Then they began to have a little hope
for him, when who should come along but another dog he knew? There had
been some bad blood between the two, and what do you think? No sooner
does my old friend catch sight of the other than up he jumps and runs
after him. Of course he was too feeble to do anything in the fighting
line, but his intentions were good.”

“Wasn’t the excitement too much for him?” asked Toby, anxiously.

“Not a bit of it. It did him good,—limbered him up and set him right on
his legs. Bull-dogs are tough.”

“I should like to know him,” said Toby, modestly. “He must be a
remarkable dog.”

“He certainly is,” replied the Fire-Dog. “I should like to introduce
you, but the fact is, we are not on speaking terms now. He means well,
Boxer does, but he’s kind of jealous-minded. You see it gives me quite
a position to run with the engine, and Boxer, he feels equal to the
business, and it kind of riles him to see me setting off to a fire. I
suppose he thinks I feel smart of myself and am taking on airs. It is
just as you have been brought up. Now, if Boxer had been brought up in
the Fire Department, his natural pluck would have taken him through the
worst fire that ever was. The more he got singed, the farther he would
venture in.”

“Do you ever meet now?” asked Toby.

“Yes, quite often; he lives near by. We don’t look at one another,
though, as we pass, except perhaps out of the corners of our eyes.
Boxer, he always shivers and his eyes kind of bulge, and he walks on
tiptoe. You know that bull-dogs are awfully sensitive, and they always
shiver when they are excited, but it isn’t the shiver of a cowardly
dog. You had better look out for a bull-dog when you see him shiver,
for he isn’t in the state of mind to take much from another dog when
he’s in that condition. He laps his chops too, then.”

The children had been waiting all this time, the boy who held Toby by a
string occasionally giving him a gentle pull as a reminder that it was
time to go. They patted Jack, while they peered curiously in through
the open door at the engine that stood ready for use at a moment’s
notice. They thought it was time to start for home, as they had quite a
distance to go. So Toby took leave of his new friend, casting longing
glances behind him as he was pulled along.

“He appears to be a well-meaning sort of fellow,” said Jack to himself,
“but he doesn’t look to me smart enough to apply the rules I have given
him. A dog of character like Boxer would have brought it about by
himself. However; it’s as well that we are not all made alike.”

Jack’s attention was before long diverted from the subject of his
new acquaintance by the return of his charge Billy, who greeted him
so affectionately that warm-hearted Jack forgot everything else and
escorted his charge into the engine-house to see that he got safely up
the steep stairs.

Meanwhile Mr. Ledwell and Sam drove down town to do a few errands. One
of them was to leave an order at a bake-shop, and as the sleigh stopped
before the door, they noticed a group of children, one of them holding
by a string a little yellow dog with a black pug nose. They were gazing
eagerly in at the tempting display of cakes in the large windows, and
Sam noticed that the little dog seemed to eye them just as longingly as
the children did.

Now Sam’s grandpapa was just the kind of man that any child or animal
would appeal to if he were in trouble, and as he stepped out of the
sleigh and walked by the group of children, he looked at them in his
usual pleasant manner.

“Mister,” said a voice very timidly, “will you please to give me a cent
to buy something to eat?”

The voice came from a little girl, the youngest of the children.

“Why, Maysie, you mustn’t ask for money; that’s begging,” said the boy
who was holding the dog.

“What do you want to eat, little girl?” asked Mr. Ledwell’s kind voice.

“Cake,” replied Maysie, emboldened by the pleasant eyes that seemed to
be always smiling.

“Well, look in at that window,” said Mr. Ledwell, “and tell me what
kind of cake you think you would like to eat.”

Maysie’s mind was evidently already made up, for she at once pointed to
a plate of rich pastry cakes with preserve filling.

“That kind,” replied Maysie, promptly.

“Could you eat a whole one, do you think?” asked Mr. Ledwell.

“Yes,” replied Maysie, eagerly.

“Could you eat _two_, do you think?” asked Mr. Ledwell.

“Yes,” replied Maysie, promptly.

“Do you think you could eat three of them?” asked Mr. Ledwell.

“Yes,” replied Maysie.

“Well, do you think you could eat four?”

“I’d try,” replied Maysie, confidently.

“Wait here a minute,” said Mr. Ledwell, “and I will see what I can do.”

The children crowded around the window, and eagerly watched the young
woman behind the counter fill a large paper bag with cakes from every
plate in the window, the largest share being taken from the plate of
pastry cakes that had been Maysie’s choice.

Mr. Ledwell glanced at the faces peering in at the window, following
eagerly every motion of the young woman with the paper bag. The little
yellow dog was no less interested than the children, and had been held
up in the boy’s arms, that he might obtain a better view. From this
group Mr. Ledwell’s eyes fell on his little grandson, who was standing
up in the sleigh to see what was going on, and whose bright face was
aglow with pleasure at the prospect of the treat in store for the group
at the window.

“It would be hard to say whether they or Sam are the happiest,” said
Mr. Ledwell to the young woman behind the counter, as he took the paper
bag and left the store.

“Or the generous man who takes the trouble to give so much pleasure to
others,” added the young woman to herself, as she glanced at his kind
face.

“Here, little girl,” said Mr. Ledwell, handing the paper bag to Maysie.
“Now what will you do with all these good things?”

“We’ll divide them between ourselves,” replied Maysie, promptly.

“And the dog,” said the boy. “He must have his share, because he’s seen
them same as we have.”

“Yes, Johnny, of course the dog,” assented Maysie.

“And Mother,” said the older sister.

“Of course, Mother,” agreed Maysie. “Come on!” and off started Maysie,
firmly grasping her bag of cakes.

“Why, Maysie, you forgot to thank the gentleman,” said the elder sister.

“Her face has thanked me already,” said Mr. Ledwell.

Maysie, however, thus reminded of her manners, turned and said,—

“Oh, thank you, sir, _so much_.”

Instantly Maysie was off, followed by her brother and sister.

“Grandpapa,” said Sam, as Mr. Ledwell took his seat in the sleigh, “I
think you are the very best grandpapa in town.”

“I am glad you do, Sam,” said Grandpapa.

“Now, if God will only make Billy see, we shall be all right,” said
Sam, with his decided nod. “I shall pray to Him every night and ask Him
to, and He is so good and kind that I’m pretty sure He will do it.”


CHAPTER FIFTH


MAYSIE, firmly grasping her bag of cakes, rushed through the crowded
sidewalks and street-crossings, darting in among the carriages and
teams with the skill that only a child brought up in a large city
possesses. Sometimes she passed under the very nose of a horse, and it
seemed as if she must certainly be run over, but she always came out
safe and sound. Her brother and sister, with Toby, followed wherever
she went, but found it difficult to keep up with her. She was always
some distance ahead of them, and paid no attention to their calls to
stop for them to catch up with her.

“Stop, can’t you?” called out Johnny, who was leading Toby, and who
always picked him up and carried him across the most crowded streets.
“Stop and divy up! They ain’t all yours.”

“I’m going to, Johnny,” replied Maysie, still continuing her rapid
gait. “Just a few blocks more, and then I’ll stop.”

So away they all went once more, little Toby as eager as the children
for the share that had been promised him. They had gradually left
behind them the pleasant part of the city where the bake-shop was
situated, and had reached a part where the streets and sidewalks were
narrower and the houses smaller and closer together. When they came to
a place where building was going on, Maysie came to a stop, and seating
herself on a low pile of boards, announced her intention of dividing
the contents of the paper bag. Johnny seated himself by her side,
placing Toby in his lap, and Hannah, the elder sister, took a seat near
by.

They were not a quarrelsome family, and seemed to feel perfectly
confident that Maysie would do the right thing by them and divide
fairly. They edged as closely to the paper bag as they could get, and
took long sniffs of the delicious odors wafted toward them.

“The dog has got to have his share, too,” said Johnny, as Maysie had
helped them all around and had not included Toby.

“Each of us can give him a piece of ours,” replied Maysie, breaking off
a generous piece of hers and handing it to the little dog.

“No,” said Johnny, firmly, “you agreed to go divies with him, and he
heard it, and you’ve got to do it;” and Johnny hugged Toby closely to
him, while the little dog looked gratefully into his face and wagged
his tail in response.

“Well, then,” said Maysie, “he can have his share;” and she placed one
of the largest cakes before Toby, who ate it in such large mouthfuls
that it had disappeared and he had lapped up all the crumbs before the
children were half through with theirs.

“He eats so fast,” said Maysie, “that he can’t get the good of it.”

Toby tried to explain in the animal language that she was
mistaken,—that dogs had proved by experience that they got more taste
from their food by swallowing it whole than they did by eating it
slowly, and that every sensible dog ate in that way. “A few lap-dogs
and such as that may nibble at their food,” explained Toby, “but you
can’t go by them.”

This explanation was lost upon the children, however, because they
couldn’t understand the animal language Toby spoke in. They thought he
was asking for another cake.

“You must wait until we are ready for the second help,” said Johnny, at
the same time offering him a piece of his own cake.

Toby tried to make them understand that this was not what he said, but
it was of no use, they didn’t know what his whining meant.

“I shouldn’t wonder if he were cold,” suggested Hannah, whereupon
good-hearted Johnny unbuttoned his coat and wrapped it around the
little dog as well as he could.

“How can I be so mean as to leave these kind children, when they share
everything with me?” said Toby to himself. “I do miss those fields to
roam about in, though!” and he sighed as he thought of his country home.

At last the cakes were eaten, and one of each kind left to be taken
home to Mother. These were carefully wrapped up, and the party started
for home.

It was a poor place, their home, but they had never known a better
one, and they were such happy, contented children that they really
enjoyed more than some children who have beautiful homes and clothes,
and everything that money can buy; for, after all, it is not money and
beautiful things that bring happiness. Often those who have the least
of these are the most contented and happy, if they are blessed with
sweet tempers and cheerful natures.

In the rear of the tenement-house where the children lived, was a shed.
It was a dark, cheerless affair, but in it the children had made a bed
of some straw that a stable-man near by had given them, and here they
had kept Toby. It was not very warm, but it was better than no shelter;
and then Toby had been brought up in the country, and he was not quite
so sensitive to the cold as dogs who are kept in city houses are.

“It seems awfully cold here,” said Johnny, as he looked about the bleak
shed. The door had long since disappeared, and the raw winter air
entered through the large opening.

“He looks kind of shivery,” said Hannah. “Perhaps, if we tell Mother
about him, she will let us keep him in the house.”

“I don’t believe she will,” said Johnny, “because whenever I have asked
her to let us keep a dog, she said we couldn’t afford it, they ate so
much.”

“Let’s try,” said Hannah. “It is going to be awfully cold to-night.
Maysie can tell her, because she lets her do so many more things than
she does the rest of us.”

This was true. Little Maysie, the baby of the family, had been indulged
and petted more than the rest, because she had not been so rugged as
they were. When they all had the measles and whooping-cough, Maysie
it was who had them the hardest. Maysie, too, had been very ill with
pneumonia. Thus they had gotten into the habit of letting her have
her way whenever any important question was at hand. So it was not
strange that Maysie, in spite of a happy and generous nature, had taken
advantage of the situation and become a little wilful. It is quite
natural it should be so, when she so often heard Mother say, “Oh, give
it to Maysie, she has been so sick, you know;” or, “Let Maysie do it,
because she isn’t so strong as you are.”

So, when Hannah proposed that Maysie should be the one to tell Mother
that they had been keeping a dog for the last week, and ask her to let
them take it into the house to live, Maysie answered confidently,—

“All right, I’ll ask her.”

“That will settle my business,” said Toby to himself, as the children
trooped up the dark and narrow stairways of the tenement-house. “No
chance for me now to slip my collar. So here I shall have to stay, and
good-bye to the fields I love so much.”

The children went up to the very top tenement of the house, and stopped
a moment before opening the door.

“Give her the cakes before you tell her about the dog, Maysie,” said
Johnny in a loud whisper.

“Of course I shall,” replied Maysie, shrewdly. “Don’t I know she will
be more likely to give in after she sees the beautiful cakes?”

They found the table set for the simple supper, and their mother busily
sewing. The father of the family worked in a machine-shop, and in busy
seasons the work went on by night as well as by day; so the children
saw little of their father, who, when he worked nights, was obliged to
sleep part of the day.

The mother looked up as the children entered the room. Care and hard
work had left their impress on her face, for it was thin and worn, but
it brightened as her eyes fell on the faces of the happy children.

“I was afraid that something had happened to you,” said the mother.
“What kept you so long?”

“We couldn’t find the house at first,” said Hannah; “and when we did
find it, they made us wait until the lady looked at the work to see if
it suited. She says she shall have some more for you in a few days.”

“And we stopped to look in at the windows of a fine shop where they
sell all kinds of lovely cakes, and a beautiful, kind gentleman asked
me would I like some, and I said I would, and he went inside and bought
me a great bag full of the most beautiful ones you ever saw, and we
brought one of each kind home to you, Mother dear,” said Maysie,
putting the package of cakes in her mother’s lap.

“I hope you didn’t ask him for any?” said Mother.

“N—o,” replied Maysie, somewhat embarrassed. “I didn’t ask him for
cakes, did I?” she asked, turning to her brother and sister.

“You didn’t ask him out and out, but you asked him for a cent, and he
asked what did you want it for, and you said, ‘Cake,’” replied Hannah.

“Why, Maysie,” said Mother, reproachfully, “that is real begging! The
gentleman thought you were a little beggar girl.”

“I can’t help it,” said Maysie, beginning to cry. “The cakes did look
so nice, and I wanted to see if they would taste as nice as they
looked. He needn’t have given me so many. I only asked for just one
cent.”

“Well, don’t ever do it again, dear,” said Mother; for Maysie was
making herself very miserable over the affair, and she couldn’t bear
to see Maysie unhappy. “I guess that there’s no harm in doing it this
once. I don’t wonder you wanted to get a taste of the nice cakes. It’s
kind of tantalizing to see them before your very eyes and never to know
how they taste.”

“I will never ask any one to give me a cent again,” said Maysie between
her sobs; but Maysie was never unhappy long at a time, so she soon
regained her cheerfulness, and came to the conclusion that she had not
done such a very bad thing after all.

All this time Johnny had been standing behind the stove, keeping Toby
out of sight. This was hard to do, for Toby was a restless little
fellow, and Johnny knew that if he should move about much, his feet
would make such a noise on the bare floor that he would be discovered
before Maysie would have time to plead for him. Johnny at last
succeeded in catching Maysie’s eye, and gave her to understand that it
was high time to broach the subject; and Maysie, who never allowed the
grass to grow under her feet, began at once.

“Mother dear,” she said, going up to her mother and giving her an
affectionate hug and kiss, “we saw a poor little dog who didn’t have
any home, and he was so cold and hungry! Can’t we just take him in? He
won’t be any trouble at all.”

“No,” replied Mother, firmly, “we haven’t any room for dogs. They eat a
lot, and are a great bother. No, you can’t.”

“But he is so little he will hardly eat anything, and we can each of us
save him a little mite from our share every day, and then you see it
won’t cost anything. Do say ‘yes,’ Mother dear;” and Maysie grew more
affectionate than ever.

“No,” said Mother, firmly, “you mustn’t think of it. Father would never
allow it. He doesn’t like to have dogs around.”

“We will keep him out of Father’s way,” pleaded Maysie. “He would be
ever so much company for me when I am sick and have to stay in, and the
others away at school. It’s awfully lonesome for me then.”

Mother thought of the many days when little Maysie was laid up with the
colds that always lasted so long and made her so pale and weak, and she
began to give way. It was true that a little playmate at those times
would amuse the poor child, and after all it could not cost much to
keep a little dog. The greatest obstacle in the way was Father. What
would he say?

The children, eagerly watching their mother’s face, saw these signs of
weakening, and were sure that they had gained their cause. Toby, too,
with his true dog’s instinct, saw it even sooner than the children
did, and before Johnny knew what he was about, gave a sudden jerk to
the cord that held him. It slipped through Johnny’s fingers, and Toby,
finding himself free, quickly ran up to the mother’s side, and sitting
up on his hind legs, begged with all his might to be allowed to stay.

“Mercy on us,” exclaimed the astonished mother. “You don’t mean to say
that you have brought him here already?”

Toby looked so small and thin, and his eyes had such a pleading
expression, that the mother’s soft heart was touched. “You poor little
fellow,” she said, picking him up and stroking him gently, “I think we
can spare enough to keep you from starving.”

“We have kept him tied up in the shed a whole week,” said Johnny,
boldly, “and it hasn’t cost a bit more. I wouldn’t mind being a little
hungry myself, to save something for him.”

“I don’t think it will be necessary to go so far as that,” replied
Mother. “What troubles me most is to keep him from annoying Father. You
know he isn’t fond of dogs, and he mustn’t be troubled when he works so
hard.”

“He is a real quiet dog,” said Johnny. “I don’t believe he will disturb
him a mite.”

So Toby’s fate was settled, and he had a good supper and a share of the
cakes besides, for Mother could not be prevailed upon to eat them all
herself, and divided them with the others, Toby included.

Then came the important question of sleeping quarters. The cold
shed was not to be thought of, and it ended by the indulgent mother
consenting to his sleeping at the foot of Johnny’s bed. This was good
news for Toby, who was always lonesome when he had to sleep all by
himself. So the dog’s heart was no less happy than the children’s, and
they all went cheerfully to bed so soon as it was decided what was to
be done with Toby.

Johnny’s room was small and dark, not larger than a good-sized closet,
but it seemed as luxurious as a palace to little Toby after the dark,
cold shed. He was put to bed at Johnny’s feet after an affectionate
leave-taking by the two girls. For a while he lay very still, but as
soon as Johnny was asleep, he crept toward the head of the bed, and at
last settled himself so closely to the sleeping boy that he could lick
the hand that lay outside the bed-clothes.

“You are so kind to me,” said Toby to himself, “that I don’t believe I
should have the heart to run away, even if I could. I should like to
get a glimpse of the beautiful fields, though.”

So saying, the grateful little dog closed his eyes, and in a few
moments he, too, was fast asleep, and dreaming that he was racing over
his beloved fields, with Johnny close at his heels.


CHAPTER SIXTH


KIND-HEARTED Mr. Ledwell had already started inquiries concerning
the blind boy’s mother. In a large city where there are so many
institutions for receiving these unfortunate cases, this takes much
time. Then, at the time the sick woman was taken away, she was
unconscious, and, if she were still living, perhaps she was still too
ill to tell her name. Mr. Ledwell also consulted an oculist in regard
to Billy’s eyes, and he expressed an opinion that Billy’s sight might
be restored. First, however, there must be an operation, and, to
prepare for that, Billy must have the best of care, in order to become
as strong as possible. Life in an engine-house, kind as the men were
to him, was not the place to bring this about. He ought to have a
woman’s care,—one who would bathe and dress him, and give him the most
nourishing food to eat.

Such a woman Mr. Ledwell found. She had been nurse to Sam’s father,
and had received so many kindnesses from the family that she was only
too happy to return some of the favors she had received from them. She
was now a widow, and lived in a quiet street not very far from the
engine-house.

At first Billy took the idea of the change very much to heart. He
couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his kind friends and Jack. He was
a very obedient little fellow, though, and when the state of affairs
was explained to him, and he was promised frequent visits from his
friends, Jack included, he tried to make the best of it.

“Only think, Billy, you will be able to see the blue sky and the faces
of your friends,” said Mr. Ledwell, “and your good friend Jack who
saved your life; and by and by we shall find your mother, and you can
see her, which will be the best of all.”

Billy had used the eyes of others for so long that he did not realize
how much he should gain; but he tried to be as cheerful as possible,
because he wanted to please those who had been so good to him.

One morning Mr. Ledwell and Sam called to take him to his new home.
As Reordan dressed his little friend for the last time, it was well
that Billy could not see; for the tender-hearted fireman was so sorry
to part with his little charge that he looked very sad. Although
Billy could not _see_ the grief in Reordan’s face, he felt it in the
tones of his voice and in the gentle touch of his hand, and the tears
were running down the blind boy’s face. This sight was too much for
tender-hearted Reordan, whose own eyes began to look very moist.

Sam looked from one to the other, and his usually bright, happy face
grew serious. He tried hard to keep back the tears, but they would
come, in spite of the effort he made. At last, with the tears running
over his cheeks, he burst out,—

“I don’t see what there is to cry about. I am praying to God to make
Billy see, and I know He will do it.”

“You are right, Sam,” said his grandpapa. “There _isn’t_ anything to
cry about. Billy is going to a pleasant home, and by and by he will see
us all, and we shall find his mother, and he will be as happy as he can
be.”

Jack all this time had been eagerly watching the faces about him. He
could never bear to see anybody unhappy, and there he sat, softly
crying to himself, and doing his best not to make any noise about it.
He looked as if he wanted to remind them that all would come out right
in the end, but they were not thinking of him. So, when Mr. Ledwell
expressed exactly what Jack wanted to say, he could not contain himself
any longer and broke into a loud howl.

“There!” exclaimed Reordan, “now that we have set Jack going, I guess
it’s about time for us to stop. You’re all right, aren’t you, Kid?”

“Y—s,” sobbed Billy.

“So there isn’t any need to worry. Come on, Kid!” and suddenly catching
up the little boy, Reordan seated him upon one of his broad shoulders,
and set off at a rapid gait for the sleigh.

“Good-bye, Kid! Come and see us soon!” the firemen called out; and the
blind boy answered their good-byes all the way to the sleigh.

There was such a bustle in starting, the horses, who had grown
impatient at waiting, setting the sleigh-bells a-ringing as they pawed
the snow and fidgeted about in their harnesses, that Billy grew quite
excited, and became cheerful again. He waved his farewells as the
sleigh drove off, and called out “Good-bye” so long as his voice could
be heard.

“Poor little kid!” said Reordan; “I wouldn’t have believed that it
would be so hard to part with him.”

Jack looked after the sleigh with sad eyes and drooping tail, then
silently went back to the engine-house and lay down where he could
hear the bell if it struck. He hoped it would, for Jack was so strictly
business-like that he never liked to give way to his feelings. He lay
still for some time, thinking of Billy’s pleasant ways and the good
company he always was, and he grew sadder and sadder. Hardest of all
was it to hear the firemen say that they didn’t believe the operation
on his eyes would be successful, and that he would probably always be
blind. Jack was beginning to think that he would not be able to bear
the suspense much longer, when all at once the gong in the engine-house
struck.

In an instant the firemen and Jack were all on their feet, every
thought of the blind boy lost in the hurry and excitement of starting
to the fire. A minute more, and the engine was on its way, the horses
dashing along at full speed, with Jack tearing madly ahead, the notes
of the bugle clearing the crowded streets as if by magic.

It was a hard fire to fight, for the building was high and lightly
built, and by the time our engine reached the spot, flames were pouring
out of the lower stories. Ladders were placed against the burning
building, and the firemen mounted them to reach the roof. Among the
men on the roof were those of Engine 33. Jack watched them hard at
work, and longed to be with them. Sometimes they had carried him up the
ladders, but not to such a height as this.

Jack felt hurt and neglected, for was he not one of the company? He was
anxious, too, for how could they manage without him? It would not look
well if any of his friends should see him standing there safely on the
ground, while the lives of the rest of the company were in danger. Jack
would have preferred to walk into the midst of the blaze rather than be
thought a coward.

All at once a thought struck him. The next building was of the same
height as the burning one. Jack remembered that when a building was
burning in the lower stories, so that the firemen could not enter it,
they often reached the roof through a neighboring one. The Fire-Dog
always acted promptly, and in an instant he was at the door of the
adjoining building. It was an hotel, and he had not many seconds to
wait before some one came out. In a twinkling in crowded Jack, before
the door had time to swing back, and he was on his way to the stairs.

In the excitement caused by the fire, nobody noticed a strange dog
hurrying through the halls and up the stairways, and Jack soon reached
the upper story. The firemen were there before him, and the skylight
through which they had gone was left open. They were playing on the
roof of the hotel as well as into the burning building.

Jack crossed over the streams of water that were running over the roof,
and joined his company. Keeping as close as possible to his particular
friend Reordan, he followed his every movement; and Reordan, hard at
work, with no thought for anything but the duty before him, was glad
of the dog’s company. This feeling was not expressed in words, but a
glance of his eye as the Fire-Dog found him was as good as words for
faithful Jack, who held himself ready to share the fireman’s fate,
whatever it might be.

While hard at work, the chief espied Jack. “How did that dog get up
here?” he asked in astonishment.

“Up the ladder, sir,” replied Reordan, promptly; for he never lost an
opportunity to show off Jack’s intelligence.

“Well, that beats the Dutch,” said the chief. “It isn’t natural for a
dog to mount ladders. He’ll come to a bad end.”

“The chief doesn’t like Jack,” said Reordan to himself. “I must keep
him out of his way, or there’ll be an order to get rid of him. Keep
close, Jack, old boy!”

Jack too understood by the chief’s tone and by the expression of his
face that he was no favorite with him, for dogs often _feel_ the way
people think of them even more than people do. “I shall take care to
keep out of _his_ way,” said Jack to himself, as he followed his friend
Reordan about.

The firemen’s work was over at last, and Jack betook himself to the
street by the way he had come, and by the time his company had reached
the street there was Jack, standing by the horses’ heads ready to
start. The men, wet and tired, jumped upon the engine, and they started
for home, Jack trotting leisurely along the sidewalk, as was his custom
after a fire. Now that the excitement of the fire was over, he was
beginning to think how lonely it would be in the engine-house without
his little companion Billy.

“Nobody there to hug me and say, ‘Glad to see you back, you brave old
Jack! I wonder if you saved any little boy’s life to-day, Jack.’ No, I
shall not hear those pleasant words any more. How lonesome it will be!”

With these thoughts in his mind, whom should he see coming towards
him but his old friend the bull-dog Boxer? He was a white dog, and
he usually looked very clean, for he was always bathed once a week.
He had told Jack about it, for he didn’t enjoy the operation,
they scrubbed him so hard and used carbolic soap, which was very
disagreeable to him. They usually managed to let some of the suds get
into his eyes, and it made them smart dreadfully. This bath always took
place on Monday, after the maids were through washing, and Jack smiled
to himself as he recalled how Boxer often managed to be out of the way
when washing morning came around. This was Monday morning, and Jack
said to himself, “I’d be willing to bet a good-sized bone that Boxer
got around that bath to-day.”

It certainly looked as if he had, for Boxer’s white coat looked very
dingy against the white snow. It looked rough, too, and there was an
ugly gash over one of his eyes. “He’s been in a fight,” said Jack to
himself. “I don’t doubt he’s been having a beautiful time.”

So soon as Boxer espied Jack coming towards him his whole appearance
changed. His tail stood up straight and stiff, his hair rose in a
ridge along his spine, and he walked on tiptoe as if he were treading
on eggs and didn’t want to break them. His eyes grew fierce-looking and
seemed to bulge more than ever, although he had naturally very full
eyes. He licked his chops, too, and seemed to swell to twice his usual
size. All the time he looked straight ahead as if he didn’t see Jack at
all.

“Now this is too absurd, to keep up such a feeling,” said Jack to
himself, for thinking about little Billy had put him in a very soft
mood. So he stopped just as he was opposite his old friend.

“Hallo, Boxer!” he called in a pleasant voice.

Boxer, however, did not return the salutation, although he settled down
to a walk and seemed to be shivering.

“It seems to me that such old friends as we ought not to pass one
another in this way. What’s the use in quarrelling? Life is too short
for that. Come over this afternoon and see me. I’ve got some fine
bones that have been buried a long time, and they must be about mellow
by this time. Come over, and we’ll try ’em and talk over old times
together.”

While Jack was making this amiable speech, Boxer was walking on tiptoe
in a circle about him, and looking at him out of the corners of his
eyes. When a dog does that it means that he wants to pick a quarrel,
and he holds himself ready to spring on the other dog at the first
disagreeable word he utters. Jack, however, would not utter that word,
he was determined to make peace.

“There are no friends like old friends,” said Jack, pleasantly, “and I
can’t afford to lose any of mine. Don’t let a few hasty words keep us
apart any longer. I’m sure I’m sorry for my part of the affair, and I
can’t say any more than that.”

Boxer stopped walking about in circles, and seemed to be swallowing
something that stuck in his throat. The ridge on his back went down,
too, and his tail didn’t stand up as stiffly. These are signs that a
dog has given up his intention of fighting.

“The quarrel was not of my making,” he growled at last.

“I’m willing to take all the blame of it,” replied Jack, who was
thankful to find his old friend coming around, for he knew that a
bull-dog couldn’t be expected to do this at once. “I’ve lots to tell
you. You don’t know anything about the blind kid who’s been stopping
with us. I’ll tell you about him and about the little yellow dog Toby
who was lost, and how I happened to come across him. I gave him your
rules about slipping a collar. You know you taught them to me. I doubt
if he’s a dog of enough character to carry it out. He looked kind of
weak in his mind.”

“If he’s that kind of a dog, he’d better stay where he is,” growled
Boxer.

“I wouldn’t wonder if he did,” replied Jack, “but we’ll see. He seemed
to have a great respect for you when I told him about you, and said he
should like to meet you.”

This was very gratifying to Boxer’s feelings, and his reserve began to
thaw still more. Good-natured Jack saw the advantage he had gained, and
took his leave, saying,—

“Well, be sure and come over this afternoon and we’ll talk things
over. The blind kid’s story is very interesting. I should like to do
something for him, and we’ll think what can be done. Two heads are
better than one, you know, and yours is worth more than mine any day.”

“I’ll come around if I find time,” replied Boxer, for Jack’s tactful
words had done their work, and Boxer’s voice had lost so much of its
growl that it sounded quite natural again.

“Good-bye, then,” said Jack; and Boxer responded cheerfully, for at
heart he was glad to be at peace with his old friend, although his
nature was such that he could not have brought it about by himself,
even if Jack had met him two-thirds of the way.

“Now he’ll go home and have his bath, and it will cool his brain, and
he will be all right by afternoon,” said Jack to himself, as he betook
himself to the engine-house. “He gave in pretty well for a bull-dog,
and it didn’t hurt me a bit to take more than my share of the blame. My
shoulders are broad enough to bear it.”


CHAPTER SEVENTH


IT is time to follow the little blind boy to his new home. After a
short time the sleigh turned into a quiet, narrow street and stopped
before a small house. There was a look of unusual neatness about it,
from the carefully brushed steps to the freshly washed windows and
spotless curtains. The small bay window of the front parlor was filled
with plants and trailing vines, and in the midst of them hung a shining
brass bird-cage, the bird singing so loudly that his blithe voice
reached the ears of the occupants of the sleigh.

The front door was thrown open, not just far enough for a person to
enter, but _wide_ open as if in welcome, and in the doorway stood a
stout woman with gray hair and a motherly, smiling face.

“Here is the new boy I have brought you, Mrs. Hanlon,” said Mr.
Ledwell, “and I think you will find him as good as they make them.”

“I am sure I shall, sir,” she replied in a cheery voice that just
suited her pleasant face; as she looked down at the blind boy’s patient
face, she added to herself, “poor little soul!”

“You must manage to make him as plump and rosy as Sam is,” said Mr.
Ledwell. “If you can’t do it, I don’t know who can.”

“I will do my best, sir, never fear,” replied Mrs. Hanlon; “but come
in out of the cold, sir. I hope you will be satisfied with the room
I’ve fixed up for the little boy. I took the front chamber up one
flight, because you said he must have all the sun he could get, and the
furniture you sent for it is beautiful.”

She led the way upstairs, holding Billy fast by the hand. The blind
boy’s keen instinct, as soon as he heard the pleasant voice and felt
the kind touch of her hands, told him into what motherly care he had
fallen, and he followed her with perfect confidence. She opened the
door of the chamber that was now to be his, and even Sam, accustomed to
every luxury in his beautiful home, thought this one of the prettiest
rooms he had ever seen.

“Oh, Billy,” he exclaimed excitedly, “you don’t know how pretty it is.
There’s a little white bed with beautiful pink roses all over it, and
a little white bureau, and white chairs, and there are pretty white
curtains at the windows tied back with pink ribbons; and there are such
be-au-ti-ful plants in the window, and there are real nice pictures
hanging around. There’s a dog that looks just like Fire-Jack.”

“This is your own little room, Billy,” said kind Mr. Ledwell, “and I
hope you will be very happy here. Before long, you know, you will be
able to see for yourself how everything looks.”

“Yes,” said Sam, eagerly, “it’s only a few days now until Christmas,
and I’m praying away like everything.”

“Oh, the dear child!” said Mrs. Hanlon, watching Sam’s excited face.

“It may not come quite so soon as Christmas, Sam,” Grandpapa said.

“Oh, yes, it will, Grandpapa,” replied Sam, confidently. “It’s to be my
Christmas present, you know. Didn’t my little pony come when I asked
for it?”

“Well, I hope it will,” answered Grandpapa, “but you mustn’t be
disappointed if it doesn’t come the very day you expect it.”

“Why, of course it will! You see if it doesn’t!” said Sam, with his
decided nod.

Mrs. Hanlon had indeed made a very attractive room with the aid of the
furniture Mr. Ledwell had so generously given. “He is one who never
does anything by halves,” Mrs. Hanlon had said, when she saw the neat
white furniture. A cheap, brightly figured spread for the bed and
simple curtains for the windows, in which she placed a few of her many
plants, made a pretty, cosey room. Mr. Ledwell had also sent a few
pictures of children and animals that would take the fancy of any boy
or girl.

“Well,” said Mr. Ledwell, at last, “now that we have seen Billy so
comfortably settled in his new home, we must be thinking about our own
home. Grandmamma will think we are lost if we are not in season for
lunch.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think she will,” answered Sam.

Then Grandpapa saw that Sam evidently had something on his mind,
because he was not ready to start, as he usually was. “What is it,
Sam?” he asked.

“I am thinking that it will be kind of lonesome here for Billy the very
first day,” replied Sam. “Couldn’t I stay to lunch with him?”

“I think it would be more polite to wait till you are invited, Sam,”
said Mr. Ledwell.

“Oh, do let him stay to dinner, sir,” said Mrs. Hanlon, eagerly. “He
hasn’t been here for a long time, and I have missed him dreadfully.”

“I am afraid it will put you to too much trouble,” answered Mr. Ledwell.

“No, indeed, sir, it’s no trouble at all. It’s a real pleasure.”

“Well, if you are sure he will not be in the way, I will leave him.”

So Sam was allowed to stay to lunch, with Billy, and it would be hard
to say which was the more pleased with the arrangement.

One of the greatest treats Sam knew, was to occasionally make a visit
to this old friend of the family. He was treated like a king on these
visits, for Mrs. Hanlon thought that nothing could be too good for the
son of the baby she had nursed. She always cooked the dishes she knew
he liked, and then followed what he liked best of all,—stories about
his papa when he was a little boy.

“I think these are the very prettiest dishes I ever saw,” said Sam, as
they sat down at the neatly spread table in the cosey dining-room. “I
wish we had some just like them.”

[Illustration]

“They ain’t much by the side of the beautiful ones you have at home.”

“Oh, yes, they are,” replied Sam. “You ought to see them, Billy.
They’ve got beautiful red and yellow flowers painted all around the
edges.”

“Things always look and taste better to us when we’re out visiting than
when we’re at home,” said Mrs. Hanlon. “I don’t see what makes you like
to come here so well, Sam, when you have everything so nice at home.”

“I like your _food_,” replied Sam, “it is a great deal nicer than what
we have.”

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Hanlon.

Somehow it happened that the dinner was what Sam liked best, and he
thought it very strange; but Mrs. Hanlon wanted the little blind boy to
feel at home as soon as possible, and she had what she thought the boys
would like.

There was beafsteak that Sam liked so much, and baked potatoes,
that Mrs. Hanlon always let him open and spread himself, and sweet
cranberry sauce, exactly the way he liked it, and hot biscuits, as
white and fluffy as cotton wool when he broke them open, so much nicer
than the cold rolls or bread and butter he had at home. Then, when they
had eaten all these things, there was a nice little pudding with the
cold, hard sauce Sam liked so well.

The best part of this was that Sam was allowed to prepare his own food
all by himself, instead of having it cut up for him just as if he were
a baby. To be sure, his knife sometimes slipped when he was cutting
his meat, and a little gravy would be spilled on the white tablecloth;
and once or twice a piece of meat flew off his plate and lighted in
the middle of the table, but Mrs. Hanlon didn’t care one bit, and she
thought he did splendidly, so Sam didn’t feel badly at all about it.

Poor Billy had to have his food prepared for him, but he managed to
feed himself very well, and everything tasted as good to him as it did
to Sam. There was very little talking during the dinner, both boys
were so hungry, but when they were through and Mrs. Hanlon was washing
the dishes in the little pantry, they followed her there. Sam told
her all about the Christmas presents he was to give, all except the
one he had for her, and he told her she must hang up the very largest
stocking she had, and he was afraid the present wouldn’t go in then.
She must hang up one for Billy, too, he said, because he would have
some presents.

“Does Santa Claus bring all the presents, Sam?” asked poor little
Billy, whose experience in presents had been very limited.

“No,” replied Sam, very decidedly, “I don’t believe he does. Why, he
couldn’t get around to all the places, you know. Even God Himself would
have to hustle.”

“Did I ever tell you what your papa did one Christmas, Sam?” asked Mrs.
Hanlon.

“No, you never did. Do tell us, please.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Hanlon, as she wrung out her dishcloth, “you two boys
go into the parlor, and just as soon as I get my dishes put away I’ll
come in and tell you about it.”

So the two boys went into the parlor to wait for the promised story,
and Sam, to while away the time, told Billy about the present he had
for Mrs. Hanlon, first extracting a solemn promise that he would keep
the secret to himself, and not on any account breathe a word of it to
Mrs. Hanlon. Billy having pledged his word, Sam in a loud whisper,
which could easily have reached the ears of their hostess if she had
happened to be listening, explained that his Grandmamma had bought a
warm fur muff for her, and that he had bought her a beautiful necktie,
all with his own money which he had saved for the purpose.

“Now be sure you don’t tell her, Billy, for it would spoil all her
pleasure if she knew what was coming;” and Billy once more promised
solemnly not to breathe a word about it.

“You mustn’t hint, either, Billy, for that is just as bad; she might
guess, you know;” and Billy promised to be on his guard.

Soon Mrs. Hanlon came in, and seating herself in her sewing-chair, took
up some mending and announced that she was ready to begin her story.
Sam drew a low chair close to hers for Billy, seating himself directly
in front of her, where he could keep his eyes on her face and not lose
a single word.

“We’re all ready, Mrs. Hanlon,” said Sam, hitching his hassock a little
nearer in his impatience to have her begin.

“Well, Sam, when your papa was a little boy younger than you are, he
had a little bank made of iron and painted to look just like a real
bank where they keep money. It had a chimney on top with a hole big
enough to drop a nickel in, and he used to save all he got and drop
them in that way. He said he was going to keep putting them in until it
was full, and then he was going to open it and buy Christmas presents
with the money. It would have taken a bank as big as the State House to
hold nickels enough to buy all the presents he promised. He was going
to give me a gold watch and chain and ever so many other things that
cost ever so much. And he was going to give Cook a silk dress and a
pair of gold spectacles, and if he had money enough he said he should
buy her a little horse and carriage to take her to church in, because
she had grown kind of lame standing on her feet so much cooking. He had
promised all the others just as handsome presents, and he was so happy
talking about them that we enjoyed them as much as if we really had
them.

“Well, a few days before Christmas he was out walking with me, and we
passed a store not far from where we lived that was full of beautiful
candy of all kinds. In front of the windows there was a group of poor
children looking in and enjoying the bright paper boxes and plates
piled up with tempting candy.

“They were all talking together and saying what kinds of candy they
would give one another if they had money enough to buy it. They looked
real happy, too, choosing the candy they didn’t have any money to buy.

“‘Poor things!’ I said, ‘I don’t suppose they will have any Christmas
presents at all.’

“‘Haven’t they got any money at all?’ your papa asks.

“‘No, I don’t suppose they ever had a cent of their own, unless
somebody gave it to them.’

“‘Don’t they ever have any candy at all, or any Christmas presents?’
asks your papa.

“‘I don’t believe they do,’ I answers, ‘but they look just as happy as
if they did, and candy isn’t good for little folks, it makes them sick.’

“‘It doesn’t make me sick,’ says your papa, ‘and it tastes real good.’

“He looked very hard at the children, and I could see he felt very
badly about their not having any candy, and pretty soon I took him
home, for I didn’t want him to worry.

“Well, after we got home, your grandmamma called me into her chamber to
do something for her, and I left your papa looking out of the nursery
window at the passing. I often left him alone with the door open, and
he played nicely by himself. It took me quite a little time to do what
your grandmamma wanted of me, and when I went back to the nursery, not
a sign of your papa was to be seen. I thought perhaps he had slipped
down to the kitchen, he was so fond of talking to Cook, so I didn’t
feel anxious about him; but when I went down to the kitchen and found
he was not there, I can tell you I was pretty well scared. I hunted
through the house, but not a soul had seen him. The parlor girl said
she had heard the front door open a little while before, but she didn’t
notice who went out.

“All at once I thought of those children looking in at the candy store,
that your father had felt so sorry for. So off I started for it, and I
can tell you it didn’t take me very long to get there. Well, what do
you think I saw?”

“I don’t know,” replied Sam, breathlessly; “what was it?”

“Well, there stood your papa without any hat or coat on, and with his
little bank under one arm. He had unlocked it, and he was giving out
the nickels to the children just as fast as he could take them out,
bless his warm little heart! I never saw such a sight of children as
there were about him; where they could come from in such a little time
was a mystery; but there they were, crowding around him, and as fast as
one got a nickel, off he would run, and I don’t doubt sent others back
too.

“I can see your papa now just as plain as if it was yesterday. There
he stood in his little black velvet suit, with his hair blowing every
which way, and his eyes shining like stars, he was so happy.

“He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me, and called out, just as
happy, ‘They can have Christmas presents now, Mary. They have all got
some money, and they can buy just what they’ve a mind to.’

“‘What in the world shall I do without my gold watch and chain, and all
the other nice presents you were going to give me?’ I says.

“He looks rather crestfallen for a minute, as if that side of the
question hadn’t occurred to him before; then he says brightly,—

“‘You won’t mind waiting till next Christmas, will you, Mary? Papa will
give me some money to buy something for you with, and these poor little
children didn’t have any money at all.’”

“What did Grandpapa and Grandmamma say to him when he got home?” asked
Sam.

“Oh, bless you, they didn’t mind. He was a real chip off the old block.
In their family giving comes as easily as breathing.”

Other stories followed this one, and by and by the sleigh came to
take Sam home; and Billy bade him good-bye without a single homesick
feeling. What little homeless child _could_ have failed to feel at home
in such surroundings?


CHAPTER EIGHTH


A FLOCK of pigeons were walking about in front of the engine-house,
picking up the handful of grain that one of the firemen had thrown out
to them. They were not _all_ walking about, to speak accurately,—one,
the little black and white lame pigeon, was hopping, with one little
pink foot held closely against his warm feathers. Jack the Scrapper,
the large handsome dark-blue pigeon with the rainbow neck, was darting
in and out among the flock, seizing upon the largest grains, and
pecking at every pigeon who came in his way.

The pigeons always got out of the way when they saw the Scrapper coming
towards them. Sometimes a bold young pigeon would face him, and stand
his ground for a while, but he didn’t keep up his resistance very
long. The Scrapper was so much stronger and bolder that he always got
the better of the others in the end, and was worse than ever after
these triumphs.

The nearest the Scrapper ever came to defeat was when he was attacked
by the six-months white squab. The squab was large and strong for his
age, and as _good_-natured as the Scrapper was _ill_-natured. He had
long borne the Scrapper’s bullying ways with an ill grace, and once
seeing the bully peck sharply one of the mother pigeons who had meekly
brought up several broods in a most judicious manner, the spirited
squab could contain himself no longer, and flew at the bully with great
fury. Young as the white squab was, the Scrapper had to exert himself
to subdue him, and the valiant squab held out to the last. Although
conquered by brute force, his spirit was as dauntless as ever, and
he vowed dire vengeance so soon as he should have grown to his full
strength.

The white squab had mild eyes and a gentle disposition. He never
picked a quarrel, but never took an insult or saw the weak abused if he
could help it. These traits made him very popular with the flock, and
many of the older pigeons, as they saw him growing stronger and larger,
foretold that Dick the Scrapper would have to look out for himself
when the plucky squab should have attained his growth. Meanwhile
the squab himself said nothing on the subject, but went on his way
good-naturedly, growing stronger every day and pluming his feathers
with great care. He showed no fear of the Scrapper and never got out of
his way as the others did, but it was noticed that the Scrapper never
tried to take the white squab’s food away, nor ever pecked at him to
make him get out of his path. Perhaps he too saw how strong and big the
plucky squab was growing.

This day the flock of pigeons were feeding in front of the
engine-house, and the sparrows soon joined them, hopping in and out
among the pigeons so adroitly that even the Scrapper often found his
food vanish from before his very eyes just as he was on the eve of
picking it up. While they were thus engaged, the two dogs, Jack and
Boxer, came around the corner of the engine house, each with a bone in
his mouth, and they lay down in the sun in front of the engine-house to
eat their lunch in quiet.

The sparrows eyed the two dogs eagerly, hoping that something would be
left for them, for sparrows like to pick a bone as well as dogs do; and
the pigeons walked about, bobbing their pretty heads and cooing to each
other in low tones.

The two dogs were a long time at their repast, for it takes time for a
dog to crack a bone and get at the marrow, which is the sweetest morsel
of all. Not a word passed between them until the bones had been cracked
and the marrow eaten; then they allowed the sparrows to approach and
get what morsels they could from the pieces left.

After they had both lapped their chops in a genteel manner, they began
to talk about the matter that so interested the Fire-Dog.

“Now that the blind kid is so well looked after, the next step is to
find his mother. Mr. Ledwell is trying to hunt her up, but it takes
time.”

“The humans go about those things in such a round-about way,” said
Boxer, who was in an excellent humor after his savory lunch. “If they
knew enough to trust us a little more, they would do better.”

“I believe that the woman is dead,” said the Fire-Dog.

“No, she isn’t,” twittered a voice near by, and one of the sparrows
lighted in front of the two dogs. “No, she isn’t dead, for I’ve seen
her, and know just where she is.”

“How did you happen to find out so much?” asked Jack. “It is more than
likely that it isn’t Billy’s mother at all. You never saw her.”

“Yes, I have seen her,” twittered the sparrow. “We were there when she
fell down on the sidewalk, and we waited around until the ambulance
came and took her away. We flew after it, too, to see what was going
on, and we saw it stop before a big building, and saw them take her out
and carry her in.”

“Very likely she was dead,” said Jack. “_You_ couldn’t tell that, or
she may have died since.”

“No, she wasn’t dead. I could tell by the way they carried her. I know
she hasn’t died since, because I’ve seen her since through the window.
I light on a big tree that grows in front of the window, and I can see
just as plainly as if I were in the room.”

“It all sounds very well,” said business-like Jack, “but for all that
you may be mistaken. It may have been some other woman.”

“I am _not_ mistaken,” chirped the sparrow. “Here is a pigeon who has
talked with her, and he can tell you more about her than I can. I don’t
believe in trusting people too far, so I keep out of reach, but this
speckled pigeon can tell you more about her than I can. Come on, Pepper
and Salt, and tell Jack the Fire-Dog what you know about the blind
kid’s mother.”

The black and white pigeon hopped fearlessly up to the two dogs, and
modestly began his story:—

“You see, I can go ‘most anywhere because I’m lame and nobody would
hurt a lame pigeon.”

“Except Dick the Scrapper,” cooed a young pigeon in tones too low to
reach the Scrapper himself.

“Our friend the sparrow here had told me about the sick woman. He was
pretty sure it was the blind kid’s mother, but he didn’t dare to go too
near. (You know some people don’t like to have sparrows around.) So I
agreed to light on the window-sill and try to find out more. The sick
woman has begun to sit up now, and every day at about noon she sits in
an armchair close to the window. She looks awfully sick yet. Well, the
nurse who takes care of her sprinkled some crumbs on the window-sill,
and when I ate them she was ever so pleased. ‘I believe he would let us
touch him, he looks so tame,’ she said one day; and the nurse said, ‘I
don’t believe it, he’d fly off if you put your hand out towards him.’ I
didn’t, though, and she was more pleased still when I hopped in and let
her stroke my feathers. ‘Poor little thing, he’s lame!’ she said when
she saw my crippled foot. ‘Oh, how my poor little boy would love you!
He couldn’t _see_ you, though, for he’s blind!’ and then she fell to
crying and wondering what had become of her poor blind boy. The nurse
tried to comfort her, and I did my best to make her understand that the
blind kid was all right; but she didn’t take in what I said. I go to
see her every day, and rack my brains to think of some way of bringing
them together. I’ve tried to make Reordan follow me, but he hadn’t
sense enough to know what I wanted. So what can we do about it?”

“Nothing that I know of,” replied Jack. “So long as humans can’t
understand our language so well as we understand theirs, they will be
greatly hampered. It is a great misfortune.”

The bull-dog Boxer had listened with much interest to the stories of
the sparrow and the pigeon, occasionally licking his chops or shivering
slightly,—signs that he was deeply moved. As the Fire-Dog finished his
remark, he growled out,—

“Force them to it! That’s the only way!”

“But how?” asked the Fire-Dog. “That’s easier said than done. How would
you propose going to work?”

“Seize them by the trouser’s leg and _make_ them follow you.”

“And be taken for a mad dog,” remarked Jack.

“I shouldn’t care what they took me for,” replied Boxer, “so long as I
carried my point. If I once got a good grip, they’d follow.”

“Unless the trousers gave way,” remarked the Fire-Dog. “I’d bet on your
grip, Boxer. But, after all, that wouldn’t work, you know. We’ve got to
wait until the humans find out about it in their own slow way.”

A country wagon came by just then, and away fluttered the pigeons and
sparrows. Under the wagon trotted the large farm-dog who had told the
Fire-Dog about Toby.

“Any news of Toby?” he called out when he caught sight of the Fire-Dog.

“Not much. I know where he is, though. I’ve seen him.”

“You don’t say so? Well, why doesn’t he come home? He hasn’t gone back
on his old friends, has he? They say city life is kind of enticing. I
never had any desire to try it myself.”

“He has fallen into kind hands,” replied the Fire-Dog. “They are poor
people, but kind. I gave him your message, and he said he meant to
escape the first chance that offered. He may and then again he may not.
He struck me as kind of soft. Not a great deal of spirit, I should say.”

“You struck it right,” replied the farm-dog. “There isn’t a
better-meaning dog than Toby, but he isn’t very strong-minded.”

“From what I have heard about him, he must be a perfect fool,” growled
Boxer.

“Have you seen him?” inquired the farm-dog, bristling at once, for dogs
don’t like to have their friends insulted.

“No, and I don’t want to,” growled Boxer. “Hearing is bad enough, let
alone seeing.”

“Will you be kind enough to make that statement again?” asked the
farm-dog, marching up to the bull-dog with his legs and tail very
stiff, and a ridge of hair standing up straight on his back.

“As many times as you like,” replied the bull-dog, who had risen to his
feet and had begun to walk in a wide circle around the farm-dog.

“Now look here,” said the Fire-Dog, “fighting isn’t allowed on our
premises. If you want to fight, you must do it somewhere else. For my
part, I don’t see any occasion for fighting. I’ve led such a busy life
that I haven’t had any time to waste in that way, even if I had had the
inclination for it.”

“This is a question of honor,” replied the farm-dog, “and there is
only one way for dogs of spirit to settle it. Your friend there has
insulted a friend of mine, and unless he takes back his words we will
fight it out.”

“Take back my words?” growled Boxer. “What do you take me for?”

At this point a sudden and unexpected interruption came. The gong in
the engine-house struck sharply. The three grays came rushing out of
their stalls, and took their places in front of the engine. The harness
was let down from the pulleys that held it, and fastened into place.
The fire under the boiler was lighted, the driver was in his seat, the
men on the engine, and with a clatter of hoofs out they dashed, Jack
barking his maddest and bounding ahead in such excitement that all
other thoughts were driven out of his head.

As for the two dogs who a moment before were ready to engage in mortal
combat, they were so engrossed by the sudden interruption and the
excitement, that for the time everything else was forgotten. To the
farm-dog this was a novel sight, different from the way they did things
in his quiet town, and not a particle of the scene escaped him. The
bull-dog, with his natural pertinacity, was the first to return to
the subject of their late quarrel; but the farm-dog’s owner, who had
missed him, came back to hunt him up, and led him off, much to his
disappointment and the bull-dog’s also.

“Wait till the next time!” he snarled as he was led away.

“You’ll find me on hand!” growled Boxer.

Boxer was not usually so ill-natured as he appeared in this episode,
but it is true that he was of a peppery disposition, and not averse to
picking a quarrel. He would have given anything to have been a fire-dog
like Jack, and his disposition had become rather soured in consequence.
He was a steadfast friend, on the whole, and would have given his life,
if necessary, for his old friend Jack, whose good disposition made him
beloved of all.

So Boxer departed for home, thinking hard all the way, for he was a
conscientious dog in spite of his pugnacious temper, and, although he
would not have acknowledged it, he secretly wished that he had not been
so disagreeable to the farm-dog.

“What is the reason,” said Boxer to himself, “that when I so much
desire friends, I do the very thing to turn them against me? I suppose
it is because I was born so and can’t help it.”

If the farm-dog had seen the bull-dog on his return, playing with
his master’s little children, he would never have recognized him as
the same dog. They rolled over together on the floor, and no lap-dog
could have been gentler or more considerate than the bull-dog with his
massive jaws and grim expression. Thus it is with bull-dogs.


CHAPTER NINTH


WE must not forget Toby, the little yellow dog with the black,
turned-up nose. We left him comfortable and happy in his new home.
The children grew fonder of him every day, and their mother found him
no trouble at all and a cheerful companion when her children were at
school. He was a quiet little fellow, and after the children had left
for school and the morning’s housework was done, the mother would take
up her sewing, while Toby would seat himself near by where he could
watch her as she sewed. Whenever she looked up and glanced toward him
he would wag his tail and smile in the way dogs smile. If she spoke to
him, how fast his tail would go, and he would almost lose his balance
on the chair, he wriggled so hard. The affectionate little dog had
not forgotten how kindly she had received him the night the children
brought him into the house, and he felt very grateful to her.

Then, when the children came home, what a rejoicing there was! Little
Toby always heard their steps on the stairs before the mother did. At
the first sound he would prick up his ears and move just the tip of his
tail, for he was not _quite_ sure if the steps he heard were really
those of the children. Then, as the steps came nearer and he felt a
little more certain, his tail moved a little faster; and at last, when
there was no longer any doubt, his tail wagged as fast as he could make
it go, and he would run whining to the door. How he did wriggle his
little body as he jumped on them and tried hard to tell them how glad
he was to see them!

Then Johnny, and usually the two girls also, would take him out for
a run before supper. It was not like the runs he used to have in the
fields in his country home, but it was very pleasant after being pent
up in those small rooms.

The most unpleasant part of this new life was the fact that great care
had to be taken in order to keep him out of the way of the father of
the family, who did not like dogs. Whenever the children heard their
father’s step on the stairs, they always caught Toby up and whisked him
into Johnny’s little dark room, where he had to stay, as still as a
mouse, so long as the father was in the house. This was easily enough
done at night, but in the daytime it was pretty hard for the active
little dog to stay quietly in the dark room where there was not even a
window to look out of.

The father of the family, who didn’t like dogs, was just the kind of
man whom dogs didn’t like any better than he did them. Somehow or other
he always found dogs to be in his way. If a dog happened to be taking
a nap on the floor or on the sidewalk, instead of stepping to one side
so as not to disturb him, he always growled, “It is strange dogs
always manage to lie just where they are most in the way.” Or if a dog
barked to let people know somebody was coming, he would exclaim, “What
a nuisance that dog is with his barking!” In fact, whatever a dog does
is considered to be the wrong thing by such people, so it is no wonder
that dogs are not fond of them.

Toby had seen the father through a crack of the door and had heard his
voice, and he understood just what kind of a man he was, and that it
would be safer for him to keep out of his way.

Things went on in this way for almost a week, Toby being always hustled
out of sight so soon as the father’s step was heard on the stairs. At
last, however, Toby forgot all prudence and betrayed himself.

It was a clear, cold night, and Toby had been taken out by Johnny for a
run. The air was so crisp and cold that it was just right for a smart
run, and the boy and dog returned with sharp appetites for supper.
Toby’s keen little turned-up nose smelt the savory fumes of sausage
long before they reached the top story, and he knew that a portion
of it would be his—it would be mixed with bread and moistened with
hot water and perhaps a little gravy, but Toby knew just how good it
would taste. His sense of smell had not deceived him; as they entered
the kitchen, there were the sausages still sizzling on the stove and
smelling better even than they had at a distance.

“You shall have your share when we are through, little fellow,” said
the mother in her kind voice; and Toby knew she would keep her promise,
even if she went without any herself.

The table was set, the sausages dished, and the family seated around
the table, while Toby watched them with greedy eyes and watering mouth.
Suddenly the mother exclaimed,—

“There is Father coming! Run and put the dog out of sight, Johnny; he
mustn’t be bothered by him.”

So Johnny caught Toby up in his arms and hustled him off into his dark
room. He couldn’t bear to leave the little fellow alone in the dark;
so he left the door just ajar, that a crack of light might enter to
comfort him.

Toby had heard the step and recognized it long before the mother had,
but he didn’t want to leave those tempting sausages. They didn’t come
his way every day.

“Father is tired to-night,” said the mother in a low tone to the
children, “so you must be very good and quiet.”

The children knew by experience that when Father was tired he was
always cross and easily irritated. Mother was often tired, too, but it
did not make her cross, and the children learned to keep out of the way
as much as possible when Father came home “tired,” as he so often did.

There was never much conversation when Father was “tired,” and Toby
in his dark hiding-place could hear the rattling of dishes and could
smell the delicious odor of the sausages. Father had not been expected
so early, and Mother had bought a nice piece of steak for his supper,
but there was not time to cook it then, so the supply of sausages was
rather short. Each of the children, as was their custom since Toby had
been an inmate of the family, saved a little piece for him; but they
were very fond of sausages, and they did not have such luxuries very
often, so it really required no little sacrifice on their part. As for
Maysie, the piece she laid aside for Toby grew smaller and smaller as
she made up her mind to take just one more taste and then another. At
last it dwindled down to almost the size of a pea, and Maysie said to
herself,—

“It isn’t worth while to save such a little piece, it won’t be even a
taste;” so she ate that too.

The mother, however, seeing how small a portion the little dog was
likely to receive, ate very little of her portion.

At last the silence was broken by Maysie, who could never keep still
very long.

“There was a fire to-day right back of our schoolhouse, mother,” she
said, “and there were ever and ever so many engines there, and do you
mind the big black and white dog that came to our fire and found little
blind Billy? Well, he was there, too, and I patted him and he was very
kind to me.”

“He probably belonged to one of the engines,” replied Mother. “I have
heard that dogs sometimes do and that they go to fires whenever the
engine goes.”

“And a fine nuisance they must be, too!” muttered Father. “The men must
be fools to stand it. They always manage to get in the way when they
are least wanted.”

Now Toby from the next room had heard every word of the conversation.
When Maysie told about the black and white dog that belonged to one
of the fire-engines, Toby at once recalled the dog answering to that
description whom he had seen lying in front of the engine-house, and
who had taken such an interest in him. When he heard Father speaking of
him as a “nuisance,” it was too much for Toby, and, forgetting that he
was not to show himself, he darted through the partly opened door, and
boldly presenting himself before the startled family, declared that it
was not true, that the black and white engine-dog was _not_ a nuisance,
but a kind and obliging fellow!

“Where in the world did that dog come from?” demanded the father,
angrily. “How comes he to be snarling and growling around here?”

Although Toby was doing his best to defend the character of his friend
and was quite eloquent in dog language, it sounded to the ears of the
family like snarling and growling.

The children were too frightened to answer, and Mother undertook to
explain.

“It is a poor little lost dog the children found,” she said. “He was
half-starved and cold, and I let them take him in. He is a good little
fellow and doesn’t do any harm.”

“Doesn’t do any harm!” growled Father. “It is no harm, is it, to eat us
out of house and home, I suppose? I don’t work hard to feed lazy dogs,
let me tell you.”

“He eats very little,” said Mother, as she looked at poor Toby, who
stood shivering with fear as he heard the harsh tones of the father
of the family, and began to realize how imprudent he had been. “The
children each save a little from their portions, and it doesn’t cost
any more to keep him.”

“Turn him out!” ordered Father. “Here, you cur! you get out of this;”
and as he held the door open, out darted the little dog, expecting to
feel Father’s heavy boot as he went through.

Downstairs rushed poor Toby, so frightened it was a wonder he didn’t
fall headlong on his way. When he reached the street and felt the cold
night air, he stood still, uncertain where to go. The cold air had
seemed very pleasant to him when he had run races with Johnny, with the
prospect of a good supper and warm quarters before him; but now what
had he to look forward to? Roaming about the streets all night, hungry
and cold, was very different. The wind was sharp, and it blew through
Toby’s thin hair as he crouched on the steps of the tenement-house.
All at once he bethought him of the old shed where he had been tied
before the children had taken him into the house. It was cold and
cheerless, but better than nothing.

Toby groped his way to the shed, and sought the farther corner where
his bed had been made before. As he approached, a large rat started up.
Toby could hear him as he scurried away. There was a very little of the
straw left that the children had made his bed of; probably the rats had
carried the rest off to make their beds.

Toby sat down and tried to think what he had better do. He thought of
the warm, light kitchen from which he had been so cruelly driven, and
of the children crying to see him sent out into the cold. He recalled,
too, the kind and patient face of the mother of the family, and the
many kindnesses he had received at her hands.

“What a difference there is in people!” murmured poor Toby to himself,
as he thought of the kind reception he had met from the mother, and
then of the harsh voice that had sent him out into the cold night.

“Well, crying won’t mend matters,” said Toby to himself. “I’ll wait
until daylight, and then I’ll try my luck at finding my old home.”

He crouched upon the thin layer of straw which was all that protected
him from the cold floor of the shed. The bleak wind blew in through the
door, and forced its way through the large cracks in the sides of the
building, and Toby grew colder and colder. To stay there and perhaps
freeze to death some cold night was out of the question, and Toby made
up his mind that he would start out as soon as daylight dawned, and try
to find his way to the kind engine-dog who had been so good to him.

“If I were not so small that anybody could easily pick me up and carry
me off, I shouldn’t care so much; but I’m so small I shouldn’t stand
much chance.”

By and by Toby’s quick ears caught the sound of footsteps that he knew
were coming his way. “I thought she would hunt me up,” said Toby to
himself; “it is just like her.”

The steps came nearer and nearer, and at last, standing in the doorway
of the shed, he could see in the darkness the dim outlines of the form
of the children’s mother. “Doggy, Doggy!” she called softly, “are you
there?”

“Here I am!” answered Toby with a bark of joy, and with a bound he was
at her feet and trying to jump up and lick her hands.

“I have brought you something to eat, poor little fellow!” said the
kind woman, as she set a plate before him. It was the larger part of
her sausage that she had saved for him, mixed with bread and potato,
and it was warm. How good it did taste to the hungry little dog! and it
put warmth into his half-frozen little body, too.

The kind woman stayed for some time, petting the little dog and telling
him how sorry she was for him; and Toby tried hard in his dog’s way to
say that she need not feel so bad about it, and that he didn’t mind it
much, for he couldn’t bear to see her kind heart so touched. She had
brought a piece of an old woollen shawl with her, and before she left
she wrapped him up in it and told him she would bring him some dinner
the next day.

Then Toby was left alone once more, and the wind blew in at the open
door and through the wide cracks, and the rats scurried by him; but
Toby didn’t mind all this so much as he did before, because the warm
food had put warmth into his body and the kind words had warmed his
heart. He even fell asleep under the old woollen shawl, and when he
next opened his eyes the first rays of daylight were stealing in
through the doorway.

Toby started up at once, for he had intended to start even earlier
than this. As he passed to the street, he glanced up at the home from
which he had been driven. He had hoped to catch a glimpse of one of the
children or of the mother, but instead of that he heard on the stairs
the heavy tread of the father starting out to his work, and away sped
Toby without stopping to look behind him.

Jack the Fire-Dog was right in his estimate of Toby’s character. He was
not a dog of much strength of mind, and instead of hiding out of sight
until the man he so dreaded had passed, and then quietly making up his
mind which way he should go, as a stronger-minded dog would have done,
he rushed blindly along until he was out of breath. Then he stopped and
looked about him. Everything was new and strange to him. What should he
do?


CHAPTER TENTH


THE more Toby tried to think out a plan for action, the more undecided
he became, as is always the way with weak natures. The sun was now up,
and the great city was stirring with life. Wagons from the outlying
towns were coming into the city, shops were being opened, and sidewalks
and front steps were being washed and swept. But in the midst of all
this busy life not a soul had a thought for the poor little lost dog.
One boy, carrying a can of milk, did stop to pat him, but he had no
time to waste, and passed on.

“Oh, what shall I do? What _shall_ I do?” moaned Toby, helplessly.
“Such a big, big world, and no place for me!”

At the corner of a distant street he saw a group of dogs, all larger
than he was. They seemed, by the sound of their voices, to be
quarrelling, and Toby did not dare venture near them. He knew by
experience that when dogs are in a quarrelsome state of mind they are
on the lookout for some object upon which to vent their excitement,
and it was more than likely that they would turn the current of this
excitement upon him, a stranger in the city. City dogs, too, as a
general thing, do not like dogs from the country.

While Toby looked, the voices grew louder and more angry, and Toby knew
that the next move would be a general scrimmage, in which each dog
would blindly fight with the one nearest him, or, what was worse still,
all of them would attack one of the number. It is only the meanest kind
of dogs who do that, but tramp-street dogs are apt to do it. “What if
they should all fall upon me?” said timid little Toby; and without
stopping to see more, off he set at full speed.

The streets were now broader, and there were dwelling-houses
everywhere, instead of shops. Gradually the city was growing farther
and farther away, and before long fields and groups of trees were seen.
Toby turned into a broad avenue, and suddenly found himself in the
country. Broad fields lay around him, and just beyond appeared forest
trees. A pond, now frozen over, stood in one of the fields, and on
it were groups of happy children skating or playing games. Toby had
never heard of a park, and he wondered to see the roads so level and
everything so trim and neat. He stopped to rest and watch the children
on the ice. Soon the attention of the children was attracted to him.

Toby was fond of children, and when he saw a little boy coming towards
him he began to wag his tail in greeting. Then he jumped upon him and
tried to express his pleasure at meeting anybody who had a kind word
for him.

“Poor little fellow!” said the boy, stooping to pat the lost dog. “I am
afraid you are lost, and I think I had better take you to the Home.”
As he spoke, he took a leash from his pocket and was about to fasten it
to Toby’s collar, when away darted Toby as fast as his legs could carry
him.

“The foolish little dog!” exclaimed the boy, as he rolled up his leash
and put it back in his pocket. “I could have found a nice home for you
if you hadn’t been so silly.”

Toby did not know that this boy had saved the lives of many stray dogs
by taking them to the Home provided for those unfortunates. He always
carried a leash in his pocket for that purpose, and his bright young
eyes were very quick to detect a stray dog.

All that Toby knew about these public homes was what he had seen and
heard of the poorhouse in his native town. He had seen old men and
women sitting out on the benches under the trees in the summer time,
and he had seen their faces looking out of the windows in the winter
time. They looked to him very listless and forlorn, but he did not
know what would have been the fate of these aged people if they had
not had the shelter of this home. He had also heard people say, “Why,
I had rather go to the poorhouse than do that,” and so he had come to
consider that going to such an institution was about the worst thing
that could happen to anybody. A poorhouse for dogs Toby thought must be
a dreadful place, and he resolved that he would rather roam the streets
at the risk of starving or freezing than allow himself to be taken to
one.

So Toby ran until he reached the woods that he saw before him, and when
he found that the boy was not following him he slackened his pace.
Everything seemed very quiet and peaceful about him. Occasionally a
crow cawed from one of the tall hemlocks, the harsh voices of blue-jays
reached him from the clumps of neighboring trees, and the squirrels,
running along the branches or jumping from tree to tree, chatted in a
friendly manner with one another. Sparrows were there also, as happy
and satisfied with themselves as if their constant twittering were
melodious songs.

Toby watched all these inhabitants of the woods with great interest,
for the country-bred dog had often watched them, and he knew their
ways. It was soon evident to Toby that these little creatures were
expecting something to take place, and something of a pleasant nature,
too, for they were all in a happy mood. The sparrows flew backward
and forward, sometimes disappearing for a while, but always turning
up again as cheerful as ever. A flock of pigeons also appeared, and,
alighting on the snow, some walked about in search of any stray morsels
of food which might have been overlooked, while others took advantage
of this opportunity to put their plumage in order.

Toby, curious to see what it could be that these little creatures were
expecting, secreted himself behind a clump of barberry bushes and
waited. He thought his presence was not noticed, but he was mistaken.
The bright little eyes of the nuthatch were on him, and he was trying
his best to find out something about the stranger. Creeping along
the under side of a large limb that grew near the spot where Toby sat
hidden, the bright eyes watched every motion, for nuthatches are timid
birds and very suspicious of strangers.

All at once the sparrows who had disappeared from sight came flying
back in great excitement, twittering as they flew: “Coming! Coming! He
is almost here!” and immediately secured favorable positions on the
outskirts of the party.

No sooner had the sparrows settled themselves, than a sleigh drawn
by two handsome horses was seen approaching at a rapid rate. In the
sleigh were two little boys and a middle-aged gentleman. One of the
boys sprang out as soon as the sleigh stopped, and Toby noticed that he
had a basket in his hand. The other boy sat still until the gentleman
alighted and lifted him carefully out.

“Here they are, Billy!” exclaimed the little boy who had jumped out.
“They are all here, and Dick the Scrapper is here too, just as cross
as ever. Oh, you ought to see how handsome the squirrels look!”

“Can’t he see for himself, without that smart little chap telling him?”
muttered Toby to himself.

“No, he can’t,” replied a voice from above. “Don’t you see that he is
not a seeing child?”

Toby started, to find that he had been overheard, and looking up saw
the little nuthatch hanging head downward, eying him sharply.

“I didn’t know you were there,” murmured Toby, taken greatly by
surprise.

“I know you didn’t. I’ve been watching you for some time, and I can see
that you are a lost dog.”

Meanwhile Sam was scattering the contents of his basket far and wide,
reserving the finest of the nuts to tempt the squirrels to eat from
his hand. He did not forget the little blind boy, and gave the largest
share to him to hold.

As Toby looked from the face of the little boy who was lending his
eyes to his blind friend to the genial one of his grandpapa, he began
to be puzzled. “Where have I seen those faces before?” he said to
himself. “I am sure I have seen them somewhere. I know I have heard the
gentleman’s voice, too. You don’t hear such a pleasant one every day;”
and Toby shuddered as he recalled the harsh tones of the father of the
family.

Suddenly the vision of three children and a little dog looking
longingly in at the tempting display of a bake-shop rose before Toby’s
eyes, and he exclaimed aloud: “I have it! That is the gentleman who
gave the cakes to little Maysie! and how good they did taste!”

“I thought I heard a dog bark!” cried the little boy who had brought
the basket. “Didn’t you hear him, Grandpa?”

“Yes,” replied the gentleman, “and it came from behind those bushes.”

Sam ran around the clump of barberry bushes, and there crouched Toby,
trembling with excitement and anxiety. The kindly expression in the
little boy’s face, and the pleasant tones of his voice, however, won
the confidence of the timid little dog, and he made no resistance when
Sam stooped and took him up in his arms.

“He is a lost dog,” said Grandpapa, gently stroking Toby’s head. “It
will never do for him to wander around in this bleak place. We must
look after him.”

“I will wrap him up in the fur robe, and then he will be as warm as
toast,” replied Sam, carrying the little dog to the sleigh. When he was
placed in one corner of the roomy sleigh, on the soft cushion, and the
warm fur robe securely tucked about him, Toby was as comfortable as any
dog could hope to be.

Sam did not linger so long as usual this morning, feeding the birds and
squirrels. Finding a stray dog was an unusual excitement for him, and
he was eager to look after him. So he quickly emptied the contents of
his basket upon the snow, and the party started for home, leaving the
crumbs and nuts to be eaten at leisure.

Toby sat between the two boys, each having an arm around him, and the
sleigh started. Toby had never had a sleigh-ride before, and the rapid
motion of the sleigh, with the jingling of the bells quite excited him.
He sat up very straight, and pricked up his ears, while his little
black turned-up nose sniffed the fresh cool air.

“I can keep him, can’t I, Grandpapa?” asked Sam, hugging the little dog
closely to him; and Toby listened anxiously for the answer.

“I am afraid Grandmamma would not like the idea of having him around
the house,” replied Grandpapa. “A city house isn’t a good place to keep
a dog in.”

“But I could keep him tied up in the washroom.” Toby looked anxiously
from one to the other, while his fate was being settled.

“Oh, he would be a very unhappy little dog tied up by himself, Sam,”
said Grandpapa.

“Well, he could play out in the back yard, you know, and he could go to
drive with us,” pleaded Sam.

“He wouldn’t be happy kept so, Sam. He would feel like a little
prisoner. I am sure by his looks that he came from the country, and he
has probably had open fields to run about in. I don’t believe he was
ever kept tied.”

“What can we do with him, then?” asked Sam. “If he can’t tell us where
his home is, how can we take him back? I hope you don’t mean to have
the poor little fellow lost again;” and Sam’s face grew as anxious as
Toby’s.

“Of course I mean to provide for him, Sam,” said Grandpapa. “It is true
we can’t take him to his own home, as he isn’t able to speak and tell
us where it is, but we will do the next best thing. We will take him
to the Home that receives all the stray dogs and cats that are taken
there. It is called the ‘Animal Rescue League.’”

At these words Toby took alarm and gave a great bound to free himself.
In another instant he would have leapt from the sleigh, but Sam was
ready for him and tightened his grasp on the foolish little fellow.

“Why, he tried to jump out of the sleigh,” said Sam. “Do you suppose he
heard what you said, Grandpapa?”

“Dogs often seem to understand what is said about them,” replied
Grandpapa; “but he would be very foolish to object to being taken to
such a pleasant place. He will have the kindest care until a good home
is found for him.”

“Will they let him play?” asked Sam, greatly interested, and continuing
to keep a strong hold upon the struggling Toby.

“Certainly they will, and he will find other dogs there too. I don’t
doubt he will have a fine time.”

Foolish Toby kept up his struggles at intervals, for he couldn’t bear
the thought of being taken to the Home. “A dog’s poorhouse, that is
what it is,” he said to himself.

“I wonder how they happened to think of making a home for dogs that are
lost,” said Sam.

“I can tell you what I know about it,” said Grandpapa. “A very
tender-hearted lady who loves dogs and cats, thought there should be
some place in the city where lost and neglected animals could be sent.
So she went about to see people, and wrote letters about it until she
got people sufficiently interested to give money towards it. Then they
hired a house in the middle of the city, and all the stray dogs and
cats people find are taken there and kindly cared for.”

“That lady must be very kind,” said Sam, thoughtfully. “I should like
to see her.”

“Perhaps you will some day. They had a Christmas-tree for the dogs and
cats last year, and I’m told they all had a fine time.”

Sam burst out laughing, and Billy laughed too, to think of a
Christmas-tree for dogs and cats.

“I suppose they put on it all sorts of things that dogs and cats
like,” said Sam, “bones and cakes and all such things.”

“Perhaps they put on some things for them to play with,” said Billy,
who had listened with great interest to all Mr. Ledwell had said about
the Home.

“I shouldn’t wonder if they did,” said Grandpapa.

“And I guess they put saucers of milk and plates of nice food under the
tree,” said Billy, who had a good deal of imagination.

Toby listened to this conversation and ceased to struggle. All this
sounded very well, if it were true, but he expected to find at the Home
dogs sitting about listlessly, just as he had seen the old people at
the poorhouse in his town. The story of the Christmas-tree pleased him
greatly. “Perhaps, after all, it is not so bad as I expected,” said
Toby to himself, as the sleigh stopped.

“Here we are!” said Grandpapa, as he got out and took Toby in his arms.

“It doesn’t look like a Home,” said poor Toby to himself. He had
expected to see a large brick building standing by itself like the
poorhouse. “It looks just like the other houses.”

“Don’t be afraid, little fellow,” said Mr. Ledwell, as he felt Toby
tremble. “Nobody is going to hurt you. You stay in the sleigh with
Billy, Sam. I will bring you both to see the little dog when he feels
at home.”

Mr. Ledwell entered the house and set the little dog on the floor. Poor
Toby was so limp from fear that he could hardly stand, but remained in
the spot where he was placed with drooping head and tail.

“I have brought you a new dog,” said Mr. Ledwell, addressing a
rosy-cheeked young woman. “Have you a place for him?”

“He doesn’t take up much room, that is certain,” replied the young
woman, stooping to pat the frightened little creature. “Yes, I guess we
can manage it.”

At these words in rushed two little terriers, and bouncing upon the
limp and terrified Toby, at once knocked him over in their attempt to
engage him in play.

“You ought to be more polite to strangers,” said the rosy-cheeked young
woman, picking up Toby and putting him on a chair out of the reach of
the two lively terriers, who pretended that they had treed their game
and took short runs up to the chair, barking themselves into a state of
great excitement.

“We’ll give him something to eat, and he’ll soon be all right,” said
the pleasant young woman.

The excitement of the terriers over the new arrival had telegraphed
the news throughout the Home, and the deep voices of large dogs and
the high voices of smaller ones all extended a welcome to the little
wanderer. Their tones told of kind treatment and comfort, and Toby was
comforted. “How different,” he thought, “from a poorhouse! This must be
a good place!”


CHAPTER ELEVENTH


ON the morning of the day before Christmas Sam awoke unusually early,
and jumped out of bed so soon as his eyes were fully open.

“I must hurry as fast as I can,” he said to Mary, “for I shall be
awfully busy all day;” and while he was dressing he talked about the
presents he was to give. “And the best of all is the present I am going
to have myself,” he added. “I suppose you know what that is.”

“Is it the little dog-cart for your pony it is?” asked Mary.

“No, indeed it is not!” exclaimed Sam, contemptuously. “It is something
ever and ever so much better than that. Just think, poor Billy is going
to see, and I sha’n’t have to lend him my eyes any more.”

“Won’t that be nice!” said Mary; but his grandpapa from the door of his
dressing-room heard Sam’s words with a heavy heart.

“What shall we do about it?” he asked Grandmamma when he had repeated
their little grandson’s words. “I think we ought to explain about the
operation that Billy must undergo; but we have let him think so long
that Billy will see by Christmas he will take it very hard. I thought
the boy would be all right by Christmas time, and I wanted Sam to be
spared the pain of knowing what poor Billy would have to go through.”

“I thought so, too,” replied Grandmamma, “and I don’t like to disturb
Sam’s innocent faith. I don’t know how he will take it.”

At this point in burst Sam, full of excitement.

“I shall have to hustle around to get through before night,” he said
in his decided way. “We shall have to start right after breakfast to
get the wreaths and things to hang up, sha’n’t we, Grandmamma? And we
mustn’t forget to bring some for Billy, too, you know.”

“Wouldn’t you rather spend the money in something Billy could enjoy
more?” asked Grandmamma. “You know wreaths and garlands are only to
look at, and poor Billy can’t see yet.”

“But he _will_ see them to-morrow, don’t you see?” said Sam,
triumphantly. “You forget, Grandmamma, about my Christmas present, I
guess.”

“My dear boy,” said Grandmamma, gently, “don’t feel so sure about
Billy’s seeing exactly on Christmas Day. It may come a little later,
you know.”

“Oh, no, it won’t!” replied Sam, decidedly. “You will see, Grandmamma!”
and he was off before his grandmother could answer.

So soon as breakfast was over, during which Sam was so excited that he
ate very little, the sleigh came around to the door, and Sam and his
grandmother started for the evergreens. It was quite a long drive to
the big market, for they always bought them there, because the little
boy enjoyed so much seeing the large building arrayed in its Christmas
dress.

The streets, as they approached the business part of the city, were
crowded even at that early hour. Everybody carried packages, and
every face seemed to have caught the spirit of Christmas, which is
a loving and generous spirit. The shop windows were gay with bright
colors and garlands of evergreen, and groups of people were collected
in front of the most attractive of these windows. In one of them was
a real Christmas scene, and Sam wanted so much to look at it that his
grandmother told the driver to stop. By standing up on the seat of the
sleigh, Sam got a splendid view. It was a winter scene, with snow on
the trees and on the ground, and there was Santa Claus sitting in his
little sleigh, which was piled full of presents, and four beautiful
little reindeer were harnessed to it. The crowd in front of this
window reached out to the street, and on the outside, waiting to take
advantage of an opening to slip through and get a view of the window,
were three children, a boy and two girls.

Mrs. Ledwell, who was always ready to see just what was needed, caught
sight of these children who were waiting so patiently for their turn to
come. Seeing them look toward the sleigh and at Sam, who was so intent
in watching the beautiful Santa Claus that he had not noticed them, she
saw that they looked as if they recognized her little grandson.

“Say, Maysie,” said the boy, pulling his little sister by the sleeve,
“do you mind the time when the gentleman gave us the nice cakes?”

“Of course I does,” replied Maysie, promptly.

“That is the same sleigh he was in, and the same horses, and it is the
same boy, for I minded the fur cap of him.”

Mrs. Ledwell beckoned to the children to come nearer. “Did you say you
had seen this little boy before?” she asked kindly.

“Yes, once,” replied Johnny, promptly.

“It was the time the gentleman gave us the cakes,” said Maysie,
eagerly. “They tasted awful good;” and Maysie almost smacked her lips
at the thought of them.

The elder sister gave Maysie’s dress a little pull. “I’m not going to
ask for any,” replied Maysie, in a loud whisper, “so you needn’t twitch
my dress so hard.”

A smile came over Mrs. Ledwell’s face. “Would you like to buy some
cakes to-day?” she asked.

“Yes,” replied Maysie, promptly, “but I’d rather buy a doll.”

“Why, Maysie,” said her sister, reproachfully, “I should think you’d be
ashamed of yourself.”

“I ain’t,” replied Maysie, without any appearance of mortification.
“She asked me, so there!”

“Yes, I asked her,” said Mrs. Ledwell, “and there is no harm in telling
what she wants most, for Santa Claus is about, you know, at this time,
and he has very sharp ears.”

“Do you suppose he heard what I said?” asked Maysie, straining her neck
to get a glimpse of the Santa Claus in the window.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if he did,” replied Mrs. Ledwell. “You will
find out to-morrow. Now tell me where you live, Maysie.”

Maysie rattled off the address in a loud voice, for she hoped that
Santa Claus would overhear it and send the doll she wanted so much.

Mrs. Ledwell then left Sam sitting in the sleigh, and entered the
store. She picked out a beautiful doll, a pretty chatelaine bag, and a
boy’s sled, and ordered them to be sent to the address Maysie had given
her. Then with a glow at her warm heart, to think of the pleasure these
gifts would carry with them, she joined her little grandson.

“Do you remember to have seen those children before, Sam?” she asked,
as they drove along.

“Yes, I remember them,” replied Sam. “They were looking in at the cakes
in the bake-shop window, and Grandpapa bought them a great bagful of
them. They looked as if they didn’t have cakes every day, Grandpapa
said.”

Sam had taken no special notice of the dog the little boy had with him
on that occasion, or he would probably have recognized the lost dog he
had found in the park as the same one.

The market was soon reached, and Sam and his grandmother went up
the steps. The front of the large building was piled high with long
garlands of evergreen for trimming, and green wreaths bright with red
berries. Christmas-trees and branches of holly filled every vacant
nook. Here also were groups of children, eager to obtain as many
glimpses as possible of the Christmas pleasures they could not expect
to have.

Mrs. Ledwell’s tender heart was touched at the sight of the little
patient faces, and her ready hand went straight to her well-filled
purse. She knew by experience that these little people would be there,
and had provided a goodly supply of change. “Sam,” she said to her
little grandson, “would you like to give those children something for
Christmas?”

“Yes, indeed I should, Grandmamma,” replied the little boy, delightedly.

Each child seized the coin Sam held out to him, and darted away with
his prize with the speed of the wind. Very few stopped to express
thanks for the gift, but the happy faces spoke more eloquently than
words could have done.

“They remind me of chickens snatching up a worm and running off
that the others may not take it away from them,” said Mrs. Ledwell
to herself, as she watched the little waifs darting off with their
presents.

“I just wish Grandpapa could have seen how happy those little children
looked to think they could buy something for Christmas,” said Sam, as
he followed his grandmother into the market.

“Oh, Grandpapa is feeling very happy to-day,” she replied, “for he has
been sending Christmas dinners to a great many little boys and girls.”

“It _smells_ just like Christmas here, doesn’t it, Grandmamma?” said
Sam, as they passed down the long building, the stalls on both sides
tastefully decorated with evergreens and bright berries.

“Now, Sam,” said Grandmamma, stopping before one of the stalls, “we
must pick out a nice turkey for Mrs. Hanlon and Billy.”

“You must give me a very nice turkey, Mr. Spear,” said Sam, trying to
talk as Grandpapa did.

“I’ll do the best I can for you,” replied Mr. Spear; and after looking
over a pile of turkeys he selected a fine, plump one and placed it
before the little boy.

“I don’t like the looks of that bird,” said Sam, with a very decided
air.

“Why, Sam,” said his grandmother, “what do you mean?”

“I don’t like the looks of those legs,” said Sam in the same decided
manner.

“What is the matter with them?” asked Mr. Spear, greatly amused at the
little boy’s grown-up air.

“I don’t like the color of them,” persisted Sam.

“Why, what color do you expect them to be?” asked Mr. Spear, trying to
keep from smiling. “I don’t know what other color they could very well
be.”

“Oh, yes, they could!” replied Sam, shrewdly. “I want a turkey with
yellow legs, because they are the best.”

“I don’t know as I ever saw a turkey with yellow legs,” replied Mr.
Spear, gravely. “If I had one, I would give it to you.”

“Why, Sam,” said Grandmamma, who had been greatly amused at the
conversation, “what made you ask for a turkey with yellow legs? They
are always lead-color, like this one.”

“Grandpapa always asks for _yellow_-legged ones. He says the
blue-legged ones are not fit to eat,” replied Sam, “and you know that
Grandpapa is _very particular_.”

“I guess he’s thinking of _chickens_,” said Mr. Spear, “and has got
’em kind of mixed up with turkeys in his mind.”

“That must be it,” replied Mrs. Ledwell. “Well, I will have this one
and another just like it. You would like to send one to the little
children we saw looking at Santa Claus, wouldn’t you, Sam?”

Then cranberries and apples and potatoes were bought to go with the
turkeys, and some huge squashes took Sam’s fancy so greatly that one
was sent with each turkey.

After that, wreaths and garlands were selected and piled upon the seat
opposite Sam and his grandmother, and they drove home, the fragrance
from the evergreens mingling with the crisp air.

After lunch, came what Sam considered about the best part of Christmas,
the pleasant task of distributing presents at the houses of their
friends. Sam liked to do this all by himself, it gave him such a
grown-up feeling. So soon after lunch the sleigh was brought around
and piled high with packages of every size and shape, each one neatly
addressed. Then Sam was tucked in on the back seat all by himself, and
he looked like a little rosy Santa Claus, with his fur cap, the fur
robes, and the presents piled high about him.

Whenever they stopped to leave a present, Sam would run up the steps
and always leave word that the present must not on any account be seen
until Christmas morning. He left Billy’s and Mrs. Hanlon’s presents
until the last because he took the most interest in them and wanted to
make a call on them, besides.

Sam found them both in the cosey parlor, Mrs. Hanlon sewing and at the
same time telling stories to the little blind boy. Billy had improved
very much in appearance in this new home. He was never left alone, as
he had to be so much of the time at the engine-house, and his face lost
much of the sad expression it had before he came here. Both Mrs. Hanlon
and Billy were delighted to see their little visitor, who came in with
his arms piled high with packages and his face beaming with happiness.

“You mustn’t either of you look into the packages or try to find out
what is in them,” he said, as he laid them down on the sofa.

“No, indeed, we shouldn’t think of such a thing,” Mrs. Hanlon assured
him. “There wouldn’t be any surprise for us if we knew what we were
going to have.”

Sam made quite a little call, and told Billy about his visit to the
big market and what he saw there; and then he told him about the three
children he saw trying to look in at the window where Santa Claus was.
He told him all about that wonderful Santa Claus, too, how exactly like
a real live man he looked, about the four beautiful little reindeer
harnessed to his sleigh, and how natural the snow and the trees looked.

Billy listened to all this with great interest, and seemed to enjoy it
as much as if he had seen it as Sam had. When Sam told him about the
three children, and said that the little one who wanted a doll so much
was called “Maysie,” Billy said,—

“Why, that was the name of one of the children who were so good to me
that time they took my mother away.”

“Perhaps it was the same one,” said Sam. Billy, however, could not tell
how the little girl looked, so they could not be sure.

“If I see them again,” said Sam, “I will ask them if they are the same
ones.”

When Sam thought it was time for him to go, he repeated his
instructions in regard to the presents, and extracted a promise from
both not to exercise any undue curiosity to find out what their
presents were. When Mrs. Hanlon followed him to the door, he confided
to her that his present to Billy was a little fire-engine that would
throw a real stream of water, and he thought it would be of great use,
as they could water the plants with it. “We can make believe there is a
fire and can turn the hose on just as real engines do,” he added.

“It must be beautiful,” said Mrs. Hanlon, “but I wish the poor child
could _see_ it;” and she gave a deep sigh.

“But he _will_,” replied Sam, brightly. “You haven’t forgotten what I
told you about my Christmas present, have you?”

“No, indeed, I remember; I only hope you won’t be disappointed!”

“Of course it will come. It is sure to,” replied Sam, confidently.
“Didn’t my little pony come all right?” And with a happy good-bye Sam
ran down the steps and jumped into the sleigh.

“Dear little soul!” said Mrs. Hanlon, looking after him as he waved his
hand gayly at her. “How disappointed he will be!” and the tears stood
in her kind eyes as she closed the door and joined the little blind
boy.


CHAPTER TWELFTH


WHEN Sam went to bed that night, he pulled his window-shades to the
very top of the window, that he might awake as early as possible.
This arrangement had the desired effect, for when Mary came in he had
examined all the presents that were in his Christmas stocking and was
nearly dressed besides.

“I will tell you why I am in such a hurry,” he said in answer to Mary’s
look of surprise. “I want to go over to see Billy the very first thing.”

“Oh, you must wait until after breakfast,” said Mary. “It is a very
cold morning, and Billy is probably abed and fast asleep yet.”

“Oh, no, he isn’t,” said Sam. “He’ll be sure to be up. So give me my
coat and cap, Mary, please.”

“Indeed, your grandmamma wouldn’t like to have you go out so early,”
said Mary, “and such a beautiful breakfast as Cook has got!”

“I don’t care about that, Mary,” replied Sam, decidedly. “I _must_ see
Billy the very first thing. I know the way very well.”

In vain Mary tried to persuade the little boy to wait until after
breakfast, but he was so persistent she knew he would go alone if she
refused to go with him; so she very reluctantly agreed to go. She dared
not disturb his grandparents at so early an hour, or she would have
appealed to them to decide the matter. So the two started out on their
expedition.

Sam had never been in the streets at so early an hour. The sun rises
late at this season of the year, and its bright rays were just
streaming over the tall house-tops as Sam and Mary sallied forth.
Most of the families in the neighborhood were still in bed, but the
houses were being put in order for the day. Front steps were being
swept down, front doors dusted, parlor shades drawn up, and sidewalks
cleaned. Colonies of sparrows perched among the trees and secreted in
the branches of the vines that grew against the houses, had not yet
finished their morning hymns, and their joyous twittering was heard on
every side.

The air was so cold that Mary made her little charge walk briskly, and
by the time they reached Mrs. Hanlon’s house his cheeks were glowing.
They found Billy dressed and holding the engine in his lap. Sam gave
a keen glance at the little blind boy, who sat passing his hands
caressingly over the beautiful toy, but his eyes were not bent upon
it,—they were fixed straight before him in the same old way.

“Billy,” cried Sam earnestly, as he watched the blind boy’s patient
face, “can you see it with your eyes?”

“No,” replied Billy, cheerfully, “but I know just how it looks because
I can feel it, you know.”

“Can’t you really see the pretty red wheels and the shining brass and
everything?” said Sam, very earnestly. “Try real hard, Billy, and
perhaps you can.”

“No,” said Billy, gently, “but you can tell me all about it, and we can
play with it all the same.”

A great change came over Sam. The bright color left his cheeks, and his
lips began to quiver. Kindly Mrs. Hanlon knew what was going on in the
little boy’s mind, and she tried to take him in her motherly arms to
comfort him; but he broke away from her and ran downstairs and out of
the door. Mary followed him, but she found it hard to keep pace with
him as he rushed at full speed along the streets. He paid no heed to
her entreaties to stop, and arrived breathless at his grandpapa’s house.

Mrs. Ledwell, who was about to go down to breakfast, was startled to
see her little grandson appear in such a breathless and excited state.

“Grandmamma,” he exclaimed, “I am never going to pray to God again as
long as I live!”

“Why, Sam!” exclaimed his astonished grandmother, “what do you mean?”

“Billy can’t see,” he answered, “and here I have been praying and
praying for all this time; and Mary says there is a pony dog-cart for
me in the stable, and I didn’t want it! I just wanted to have Billy
see!” and Sam threw himself upon the lounge and burst into a violent
fit of sobbing.

Mrs. Ledwell hardly knew what to do, but she did the best thing she
could possibly have done. She let the little boy expend the violence of
his grief, and then she seated herself by him and gently stroked the
hair back from his hot forehead. When the weeping grew less violent and
she knew the little boy could listen, she said,—

“You must remember, Sam, that there are a great many little boys and
girls all over the world asking God for different things, and he can’t
answer all at once. It takes a long time, you know, so you must be
patient and wait a little longer.”

“But I didn’t ask for anything else,” sobbed Sam, “and he has gone and
sent me the dog-cart, after all; and I was _very particular_ to say
that I didn’t want it.”

“By next summer, Sam, I am quite sure that Billy can see, and think
what fine drives you and he can have together!”

“Summer is a long way off,” replied Sam, “and I _did_ so want Billy to
see _now_!”

“We can’t have things come about just as we want them, my dear little
boy,” said Grandmamma.

“I sha’n’t pray any more, just the same,” said Sam, decidedly.

“Billy is in a comfortable home and has found kind friends, and
Grandpapa will soon find out where his mother is; and then by and by
Billy will see, and then how happy he will be! There are a great many
little boys worse off than Billy is, so if I were you I would try to be
patient.”

Sam was silent for a while, and his grandmother knew that he was
thinking the matter over in his sensible mind.

“I suppose there must be an awful lot of boys and girls asking God for
all sorts of things,” he said.

“Indeed, there are,” said Grandmamma, “and just think how much happier
Billy is than he was when you first saw him!”

“Well,” said Sam in his old decided manner, “I guess I had better keep
on praying a little while longer.”

“I think so, too, dear,” replied Grandmamma; “and now we’ll go down
to breakfast and be as cheerful as we can, because if we look unhappy
we shall make everybody about us so, and we want all to have a very
pleasant Christmas.”

So Sam, like the sensible, conscientious little fellow he was, wiped
his eyes very carefully with his pocket-handkerchief and assumed a
cheerful smile,—very much the kind of expression, his grandmother
thought, that people have when they are sitting for a photograph and
the artist tells them to “look pleasant.” It was rather a forced smile,
to be sure, but before breakfast was half over, Grandpapa, under
whose genial influence nobody could be long unhappy, had brought real
smiles back to the little boy’s face, and they were laughing and joking
together as if there were no such things as unhappiness and suffering
in all the world.

“Now I will tell you my plan,” said Grandmamma, “and you can see how
you like it. I shall be busy this morning, for I must call on my old
ladies at the Home and see if they are having a happy Christmas, but
I propose that you two take a nice sleigh-ride and invite Billy to go
with you. Then you can bring him home for lunch, and in the afternoon
a few boys and girls are coming, and you can play games together. How
does my plan strike you?”

“It strikes me very pleasantly,” replied Grandpapa, “and will suit me
exactly, for I have to see a man who lives out of town and shall be
glad of the company of the youngsters. What do you say, Sam?”

“I think it will be very nice,” replied Sam, “and I guess Billy will
think so too.”

“Suppose we stop at the ‘Animal Rescue League’ and see how our little
dog is getting on,” said Grandpapa.

“Can’t we take some cakes to him?” asked Sam. “I don’t believe he knows
it is Christmas.”

“Yes, we will take cakes enough to go all around,” said Grandpapa.

A little later, Sam and his grandpapa, with a box full of cookies and
sweet biscuits, called for Billy. The little blind boy was delighted
at the prospect of such a happy day, and he beamed with smiles as his
faithful friend Sam led him carefully down the steps to the sleigh,
while Mrs. Hanlon, looking just as happy, watched them from the door.

“What have you in that package that you take such care of?” asked Mr.
Ledwell, who observed that the little boy carried a package in one hand.

“It is a Christmas present for Jack,” replied Billy.

“Why, Grandpapa, we forgot all about him!” exclaimed Sam. “Isn’t it too
bad?”

“We have cakes enough to spare him a few,” replied Grandpapa.

“Of course, I couldn’t forget about Jack,” said Billy, “because he
saved my life, you know.”

“The dear little soul has been worrying about what to give Jack for
a Christmas present,” said Mrs. Hanlon. “He has saved up some of the
money you gave him for presents, and I told him I thought Jack would
appreciate some nice bones more than anything else. So what does he do
but ask the butcher to sell him some of the very nicest bones he had,
with plenty of meat on them.”

“And what do you think, Sam? When I told him they were for Jack, he
wouldn’t take any money for them! He said he should like to give
something towards a present for the Fire-Dog, because he is such a nice
dog.”

“You see,” said Billy confidentially to Sam, as they drove to the
engine-house, “I can make a present to Mrs. Hanlon now, because the
butcher wouldn’t let me pay for Jack’s present. Do you suppose she
would mind if it doesn’t come just exactly at Christmas?”

“I don’t believe she would mind _very much_,” replied Sam, who
remembered that the Christmas present he so much wanted did not come on
time.

“Will you go with me some day and buy something for her, Sam?”

“Yes,” replied Sam, “and we will pick out something real nice!”

The Fire-Dog was at home and rejoiced to see them, especially the
little blind boy whose life he had saved. He was much gratified too,
at the present Billy brought him. One large bone was given him, which
he at once took in his mouth and walked off with to eat by himself,
a proud and happy dog. The rest of the package was left in Reordan’s
charge to be given according to his judgment, and a dessert from Sam’s
box of cakes was added.

There was not time to stop and watch Jack enjoy his repast, as the
boys would have liked to do, so they had to leave before he was half
through. Jack was very hungry, but he was such a polite dog that he
never forgot his good manners, and whenever the boys spoke to him,
wagged his tail and smiled, to let them know how much he appreciated
the attention.

“You ought to see how he enjoys that bone, Billy,” said Sam, as they
drove off; and Billy looked just as happy as if he had seen it.

Such a barking as greeted them when they entered the building of the
Animal Rescue League! All the dogs who were around came running to see
who it was and to find out if another stray dog had been brought in;
and among them, barking his loudest, was little Toby, as happy and as
much at home as any of them. He recognized his old friends at once, and
tried by every means a dog knows, to express his gratitude.

“They act as if they know it is Christmas,” said Sam.

“So they do,” said the man who had charge of them, “and they are
going to have a Christmas-tree just like folks. They do seem to know
something is up, they and the cats too. The cats are going around with
their tails straight up in the air, and they play with one another just
as if they had lost their senses.”

“This little boy has brought some cakes for the dogs,” said Mr.
Ledwell; and Sam presented his box.

“They will come in very handy when they have the tree,” replied the man.

Then the visitors were taken over the building and shown all the
inmates, even to some big dogs out in the yard. All looked happy and
contented, and showed the best of care. Some kittens especially took
the children’s fancy, and Sam explained to Billy how they looked when
they were playing. One was lying on his back, kicking, clawing and
biting a worsted ball he had to play with, and another was running
sideways with his back arched and his tail fluffed out, as if he were
dreadfully frightened at something; while another had pounced upon one
of them and made believe he was going to eat him up. The mother of this
lively family was pretending to take a nap, but her half-opened eyes
and fond and happy purring showed that she was enjoying the romps of
her darlings as much as they did themselves.

It was hard for the children to leave this entertaining place, and
especially hard to resist the affectionate entreaties of the dogs, who
were delighted to see visitors. They had to go, however, for a long
drive out of town was before them, and they departed after a while, all
the dogs who could reach the windows barking a joyous farewell as they
drove off.


CHAPTER THIRTEENTH


SOMEHOW or other on Christmas morning everything takes on a festive,
joyous tone. The very sleigh-bells seem to ring out more merrily than
usual, and the children’s voices in their play seem more joyous than
on other days. Even the shy sparrows seem to grow bolder, and twitter
more loudly than usual. The dogs, too, seem possessed of unusually gay
spirits, and bound through the streets as if they were thinking of the
good Christmas dinner that awaits them.

The two little boys in the sleigh felt this Christmas influence and
partook of the prevailing joyous spirit. We will leave them for a time
and return to some other acquaintances,—the three children who had
cared for the lost Toby.

Great was the grief of the children when they saw the little dog turned
out into the cold, dark streets, but they did not dare to express
their feelings before their father. Directly after supper they went to
bed, and the mother soon went in to their rooms to comfort them. The
two girls were nearly heart-broken, but the mother reminded them that
the little dog would be likely to seek the shed for shelter, and she
promised to look after him and give him a good supper.

“He wanted some of the sausages so much,” sobbed Maysie, “and I ate up
the piece I was saving for him, and I am so sorry!”

“He shall have some sausage, dear, so don’t worry so about him. I will
cover him up with something warm, and in the morning you can take him
to the home for lost dogs. They will find a good place for him, I am
sure, a much better one than we could give him.”

This hopeful prospect comforted the little girls, and from them the
mother sought Johnny in his dark bedroom. He was lying very still,
and answered in a voice that he tried to make sound as usual, but the
mother knew he was trying hard to make it cheerful. As with a loving
hand she put back the hair from his forehead, she felt it hot, and as
her hand brushed against his cheeks she found them moist, and she knew
he had been crying, although he tried so hard to conceal the fact.

“Don’t fret about the little dog, Johnny,” said the kind mother. “He’ll
be sure to go to the shed where you kept him before, and I’ll look
after him.”

“It was so mean to send him out, and this such a cold night, too!”
exclaimed Johnny, indignantly.

“Hush, dear!” said the gentle mother. “You mustn’t forget that Father
is tired and things worry him. He didn’t mean to be unkind.”

“It was awfully mean,” replied Johnny, “and him such a little fellow,
too!”

Then the mother told of her plan to send the little dog to the refuge
provided for all homeless animals, and, as she drew the pleasant
picture of the home the little wanderer would be sure to find, Johnny
allowed himself to be comforted as his sisters had been, and, feeling
that Mother would look after the wandering dog, he forgot his anxieties
and fell asleep.

We have seen how the mother found the forsaken dog and fed and warmed
him, and how he at last found shelter in the very home to which they
intended to carry him.

The following morning when the children hastened to the shed they found
it empty, and great was their grief. They searched for him for days, of
course without avail. Oh, if they could have seen the little creature
in the happy home he had found!

On Christmas morning they were almost wild with delight at the presents
kind Mrs. Ledwell had sent them. As for Maysie, she could hardly
believe that she was the owner of such a beautiful doll, and she
handled it with great awe.

“I really believe that Santa Claus heard what I said!” exclaimed
Maysie. “You know the lady said he had very sharp ears.”

The big turkey, too, gave the children almost as much pleasure, and
they crowded around the mother while she cleaned it, and singed off the
pin-feathers by holding it over a piece of burning newspaper. They had
to see it safely stowed away in the oven, too; such a large, handsome
turkey had never come their way before.

“Now you had better all go and take a walk in the streets where the
nice houses are,” said Mother. “The windows will be all trimmed up
with wreaths and garlands, and perhaps you will get a sight of some
Christmas-trees, for people often have them Christmas Eve.”

The mother thought it as well to get the children out of the way for a
while, for she did not have a Christmas dinner to cook every day, and
she wanted to do full justice to all the good things sent them; and how
could she do this with three curious children following her about and
getting under foot at every step?

So the three started, Hannah wearing her new chatelaine bag in a
position in which she decided it would show to the greatest advantage,
Johnny proudly drawing his new sled after him, and Maysie with her doll
perched on her arm in a position to show off her beautiful clothes and
at the same time take in the sights. The lost dog was not forgotten,
and at every step they were on the lookout, hoping to catch a glimpse
of him at any moment.

Their way led by the engine-house, in front of which lay the Fire-Dog,
finishing one of the large bones that the blind boy had brought him for
a Christmas present. They stopped to pat him and to look at a flock of
pigeons feeding there. They watched the large blue pigeon, Dick the
Scrapper, who walked in among them snapping up the best morsels and
pecking any of the pigeons who came in his way. They noticed, too, the
handsome white squab, so strong and yet so mild-looking; but the one
that pleased them most of all was the lame black and white pigeon. He
was so tame that he ate out of their hands and even allowed them to
stroke his feathers.

The lame pigeon soon began to act in a very strange manner. He would
fly a few steps, and then look back at the children as if he expected
them to follow him. This he did so many times the children were certain
this was what he wanted. So they followed, and as soon as the little
lame pigeon saw this he flew off again, waiting for them to overtake
him. This was kept up until the children found themselves in a part of
the city where they had never before been.

“We mustn’t go any farther,” said Hannah, “or we shall be late for
dinner, and Mother will be anxious.”

“I am very hungry,” said Maysie, as visions of the beautiful turkey
roasting in the oven rose before her mind, “and my feet are very tired
too.”

“It can’t be much farther,” said Johnny, “and I am certain that the
little pigeon wants something. You just sit on my sled, Maysie, and
I’ll give you a ride.”

This plan was very agreeable to Maysie, and she seated herself on the
sled with her doll in her lap, while her brother and sister drew her
over the snow.

They had not much farther to go. To their surprise the lame pigeon
turned in at a driveway and flew toward a large brick building enclosed
by high walls.

“What can it mean?” said Hannah. Perhaps the little lame pigeon didn’t
mean anything, after all.

But the little lame pigeon did mean something. He had recognized the
children as the ones who took little Billy home when his mother had
fallen in the street, and he had taken this means to induce them to
follow him and discover the sick woman at one of the windows of the
hospital. With a noisy fluttering of his wings he flew up to one of the
windows and alighted on the sill. A pale, sick-looking woman was seated
in a chair close to the window, and the children saw a nurse come to
the window and open it. In hopped the little lame pigeon and alighted
on an arm of the sick woman’s chair.

“Why, Johnny!” exclaimed Hannah. “Do you mind the face of the sick
woman up there? It is blind Billy’s mother.”

“How do you know it is?” asked Johnny. “You never saw her but the once.”

“I know that, but I minded her hair, because it is just like Billy’s,
so soft and curly, and she looks just the way Billy’s mother looked.”

“Perhaps they brought her here because it is a place where they put
sick people,” said Johnny, who was convinced by his sister’s positive
manner.

“Now, if we only knew where Billy is, it would be all right,” said
Hannah.

“Perhaps she has found him,” said Johnny.

“I don’t believe she has, because she would look happy, and just see
the sad look of her!”

The sick woman did indeed present a forlorn appearance, even the
children’s young eyes could detect that, as she sat with her head laid
against the back of the chair, stroking the feathers of the little
pigeon.

They stood looking up at the window for some time, and gazing curiously
at the large building before them.

“I suppose it is full of sick people,” said Johnny.

“I wonder if there are any little children there!” said Hannah. “Do you
suppose the sick people know it is Christmas Day?”

This reminded Maysie of the Christmas dinner cooking at home, and she
exclaimed:

“I am just as hungry as I can be, and I know it is ever so long after
dinner-time.”

The other two children now became aware of the fact that they were
hungry too, and, fearing to be late to dinner, they set off on a run
toward home, with Maysie on the sled. Before they had gone far, they
heard the jingle of sleigh-bells and the voices of children coming up
behind them, and seeing a large sleigh and pair of horses in the road,
they drew the sled to one side to allow it to pass.

In the sleigh sat a gentleman and two little boys. The children at once
recognized the pleasant face of the gentleman. He was the one who had
bought the cakes for Maysie. It would have been strange if they had not
recognized him, for where was there another such sweet-tempered, happy
countenance, and who else possessed such a pleasant, genial voice? So
intent were they in watching the gentleman that they did not look at
the two boys who were with him until just as the sleigh, which went
slowly, was opposite them, they caught a glimpse of the little blind
boy.

“Billy! Oh, Billy! Is that you?” screamed the two elder children in one
breath.

“Stop!” called Mr. Ledwell to the driver, and the sleigh stopped in
front of the children.

The blind boy had heard their voices, and recognized them with the
quick perception that the blind possess. He turned quite pale with
excitement, and stood up in the sleigh.

“Where are you?” he cried, feeling about him with outstretched hands.

“Here we are,” said Hannah, coming close to the sleigh. “The three of
us are here. Oh, Billy, we didn’t know what had become of you and we
were awfully sorry.”

“And your mother is over in that big house yonder!” exclaimed Johnny,
excitedly. “We saw her sitting up at the window, and she looks awful
sick!”

“Oh, Mother! Mother!” screamed Billy, struggling to free himself from
the fur robe in order to get out of the sleigh. “Please, Mr. Ledwell,
let me go to my mother! Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?” and the
poor child, feeling his utter helplessness, sank back upon his seat and
burst into tears.

“Try to compose yourself, Billy,” said Mr. Ledwell, kindly, “and we
will find out all about it, and if your mother is really here you
shall be taken to her at once.”

He then questioned the children, who told him about the lame pigeon
who made them follow him, and who flew up to a window of the big house
where they saw Billy’s mother.

“I am sure it was Billy’s mother,” said Hannah, positively, “because I
minded her hair and the look of her face.”

Mr. Ledwell turned back, and going in to the hospital made inquiries
concerning the sick woman the children had seen at the window. They
were not mistaken, and in a few minutes Billy was in his mother’s arms.

After the excitement of the meeting had passed, Billy told his mother
all that had happened since the dreadful day when she was taken away
from him. He told of the kind children who had given him all they had
to give, a shelter and what food they could spare, and how Jack the
Fire-Dog saved his life. He told, too, about the kind-hearted firemen
and his life at the engine-house, and about Sam and his grandpapa and
the comfortable home he now had.

The poor woman could not find words to thank the kind gentleman who
had done so much for her blind son, and when she tried to express her
gratitude to him, he told her the best way to do it was to get well as
fast as possible and come and live with her son.

“I am anxious to find work, so that I can take care of him,” said the
sick woman. “As soon as I am well I am sure I can find something to do.”

“The first thing to be done is to get strong,” said Mr. Ledwell, “and
then we will think about working. I propose that as soon as you are
well enough you go to Billy, where you can have the best of care.
You will improve much faster there than you can here, surrounded by
sickness and suffering.”

The patient was pronounced not able to leave the hospital just then,
but was promised that she should go so soon as it was deemed prudent.

So Billy took leave of his mother, happy at the promise of a visit the
next day. They found Sam with the three children seated in the sleigh,
and the new sled tied to one of the runners.

“I thought we had better take the children home, because they were
afraid they would be late to their Christmas dinner,” Sam explained.
“Do you think they will crowd you very much, Grandpapa? We will squeeze
as close together as we can, and Maysie is almost a baby, you know.”

“I shouldn’t mind a little crowding on Christmas Day,” said Grandpapa.
“Here, Baby, you can sit in my lap.”

“I am as big as Johnny,” replied Maysie, who was ambitious to be
considered big.

Sam looked just as happy as Billy, thinking that the little blind boy
had found his mother. He sat silent for some time, and his grandpapa,
seeing his thoughtful, happy face, said,—

“Well, Sam, what are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking how glad I am that Billy has found his mother,” he
replied, “and I guess God thought He’d send this Christmas present
because He didn’t find time to send the one I asked for.”

So Sam’s Christmas turned out to be a much happier one than he had
thought it was going to be, and the three children who had helped bring
about this happy state of affairs reached home just as the big turkey
was taken out of the oven.


CHAPTER FOURTEENTH


IT is some time since we have heard from the engine-house, and a change
has taken place since we last looked in. The off horse was quite old,
and the headlong speed at which the horses were obliged to go whenever
an alarm was sounded, began to tell heavily on him. He was an ambitious
fellow, and strained every nerve to keep pace with his mates and do his
share of the work, but he was a tired horse when the scene of the fire
was reached, and soon an order came for the off horse to give up his
place to a younger and stronger one.

This order filled the kind hearts of the company with sorrow, for
old Jim was a great favorite. When the news reached them, there was
silence for a while, then warm-hearted Reordan burst out impetuously,—

“If old Jim goes, I go too. There isn’t one of us that has done his
work faithfuller than old Jim has!”

“That’s so, he’s done his duty right slap up. What would the others
be without old Jim, I’d like to know? They always take their cue from
him,” said another.

“I’ve always made it as easy as I could for old Jim,” said the driver,
“and have done my best to make the other two do their share of the
work; but the knowing old fellow won’t have it, and isn’t satisfied
unless his nose is just a grain ahead of the others, so he can feel he
is doing his share and a little more.”

“He’s acted just like a Christian,” said another, “and if we do our
duty as well as old Jim has done his, we sha’n’t have anything to
answer for.”

“Get rid of him!” exclaimed a young man. “A nice return to make for his
faithful service! It makes me sick to think how horses are turned off
when they begin to lose their usefulness! Just think of old Jim sold to
some old junk pedler or such, and being starved and beaten after all
the good work he has done! It wouldn’t break the Fire Department to
pension him, and they ought to do it!”

“They _ought_ to, but whether they _will_ is another thing,” said
Reordan. “They will say that they can’t afford to pension off all the
old horses in the department.”

“Well, if they can’t afford it, _we_ can,” replied the young man. “What
do you say to starting a fund for old Jim’s support, and boarding him
out for the rest of his life?”

What could they say, but one thing, for courage and generosity go hand
in hand, and to men who daily risk their lives to save those of others,
as do our brave firemen, a dollar doesn’t look so big as it does to
smaller natures.

After this decision the hearts of all were lightened, but parting with
their old friend came hard.

“Let’s get him out of the way before the new horse comes,” said
Reordan. “It would hurt his feelings to see a new horse in the stall
that has been his for so long.”

The others felt as Reordan did, and just before the new horse arrived,
old Jim came out of his stall for the last time. The intelligent
creature turned his eyes on the men gathered to bid him farewell, and
rubbed his nose affectionately against the shoulders of those who stood
nearest him.

“He knows he’s being sent off just as well as we do,” said one, “and
he’s trying to say good-bye to us.”

He certainly did know it, for his large, mild eyes had the sorrowful
look that all dumb creatures have at leaving old friends.

“He looks kind of reproachful,” said one, “just as if he thought we
hadn’t appreciated the good work he’s done for us.”

[Illustration]

The men had bought a warm blanket for the old horse, knowing that he
was going to a country stable which was not so warm as his stall in
the engine-house. This was buckled on him, and he was led away. At the
door he hesitated a moment, and looked back at his old home; then, with
drooping head, he left for his new quarters.

“Be good to him,” said the captain to the man who had come to take the
old horse to his new home. “The best you’ve got isn’t any too good for
old Jim.”

“We’ll take good care of him,” replied the man. “You don’t need to
worry about him.”

They watched the old horse so long as he was in sight, and nothing was
said for some time. Then Reordan spoke,—

“Well, it’s a comfort to think we’ve done the best we could for the old
horse. He’ll have plenty to eat and a good place to sleep in, and he
will have as comfortable an old age as we can give him.”

Jack the Fire-Dog had, of course, known what was going on, and his
heart was every bit as sad as the men’s.

“I suppose I’m a fool to feel so bad about it,” he confided to his
friend Boxer, “but I can’t help it. We’ve been to a good many fires
together, first and last, old Jim and I. My turn will come next, I
suppose. I’m not so young as I once was, and old dogs are in the way.”

Such remarks as these had a most depressing effect upon his friend
Boxer, for there is no dog more attached to his friends and more
sympathetic than a bull-dog, although he is so reserved that he does
not find it easy to express his feelings.

Boxer pondered over the situation, and the more he thought about it the
more convinced he became that something _must_ be done. He was on hand
when the old engine-horse was taken away from the home that had been
his for so long, and, as he looked at his friend Jack’s mournful face
and heard him softly crying to himself, Boxer could bear it no longer.

“It is true that they will be sending him away next,” he muttered to
himself; and as his indignation increased he cast his eyes about for
something upon which to vent his anger. The man leading old Jim away
caught his attention, and without stopping to consider the justice of
his act, in true bull-dog fashion he rushed after them and seized the
man by the leg of his trousers.

A commotion at once arose. Old Jim, startled at the sudden attack,
started back, twitching the halter-rope out of the man’s hand, while
the man struggled to free his leg from the bull-dog’s grip.

A bull-dog’s grip is a very peculiar thing. When he becomes excited,
his jaws, which are very strong and formed differently from those of
other dogs, become tightly locked. A spasm of the jaw seizes him, and
it is impossible for him to unlock them himself until the spasm has
passed. So Boxer held on, with his eyes set and his feet braced.

Now that old Jim was free, he stood still and looked on to see how the
affair was coming out. He was not the only spectator, for quite a crowd
collected at once. Varied was the advice given to make the bull-dog
loose his grip, and poor Boxer would have been roughly handled had not
Reordan seen the commotion and run to the spot. In a twinkling he had
out a sulphur match, and, lighting it, held it as near the dog’s nose
as he could without burning it.

The suffocating fumes of the sulphur match did their work, and Boxer
gasped for breath. Thus his jaws were unlocked, and the man was freed.
After such an excitement a dog always feels weak and shaky, and Boxer
returned to his friend Jack with drooping tail and unsteady legs.

“Well, I never before saw a bull-dog made to quit his hold that way,”
said one of the on-lookers.

“It’s the best way,” replied Reordan. “It’s a bull-dog’s nature to hold
on when once he gets started, and he doesn’t know how to stop. There’s
no use pounding him to make him let go. He simply can’t do it till the
spasm in his jaw lets up, and I don’t know any better way to bring it
about than this.”

“What did he tackle me for, anyway?” asked the man. “I didn’t do
anything to him, and the first thing I knew he grabbed me by the leg.”

“He probably thought you didn’t have any business to take the horse
off. He hangs round the engine-house a good deal;” and Reordan stroked
old Jim’s nose, for the old horse had come up behind him and put his
head over his shoulder.

“Well, if my trousers stood that, I guess they’ll stand all the work
I’ll give ’em for quite a spell,” said the farmer good-naturedly, as
he took Jim’s halter and started for home. “Say,” he added, as he saw
Reordan’s eyes resting sadly on old Jim, “don’t you worry about the
horse. I’ll look after him all right.”

This assurance lightened Reordan’s heart, and he returned to the
engine-house feeling that the best had been done for old Jim that could
be done.

The new off-horse arrived that day,—a fine young gray, with all the
restless life that only a young creature possesses. He was a superb
fellow, and he knew it, judging from the proud way in which he carried
himself. He was so full of life that he couldn’t bring himself to
walk sedately, but entered the engine-house with a springy step that
showed his colt days were not far behind him. When he was brought to
a stand-still, he pawed the floor in an impatient manner, as if he
demanded instant attention.

“Do they expect that colt to take the place of old Jim?” asked one of
the men.

“Oh, he’ll learn the whole business in a short time,” replied the man
who brought him. “He’s very intelligent.”

“Well, if the department don’t mind laying out their money in repairs,
I don’t doubt he’ll learn in time, but I don’t like the look of his
eye,” said the driver.

“What’s the matter with his eye?” demanded the man.

“It’s a skittish eye,” replied the driver,—“shows too much of the white
to suit me.”

“I’d be willing to pay for all the machines he smashes,” replied the
man; but the driver did not change his mind.

The new off-horse took possession of old Jim’s stall as if it were
his by right, and made himself at home immediately. He was very
intelligent, it is true, and he learned his duties very soon, but
still his youth was against him. He started off with the engine as
if the whole thing were great sport and gotten up especially for his
entertainment; and if the other two horses had not kept him back, there
would have been a runaway engine the very first time he was taken out.
He enjoyed _going_ to a fire of all things, because he could use his
strong muscles and let off some of the young life he didn’t know what
to do with, but he didn’t like coming back. The other two horses were
quite ready to go home at a gentle trot, but not so the new horse; and
as they lumbered along he felt that it devolved upon him to give a
little style to the team. He certainly did it, and many turned to watch
the fine knee action and spirited bearing of the new engine-horse.

One day his youthful spirits got the better of the new horse. The
department was called out to a fire in the business section of the
city, and Engine 33 left the engine-house in a mad rush at full speed,
as usual. When about half-way down the slope of the hill, a man on a
bicycle came suddenly around the corner from a side street. The new
horse was taken by surprise and shied badly. All the movements of such
a powerful young horse are vigorous, and the engine was thrown against
a lamp-post and wrecked.

When the chief heard of the accident, he remembered the dog who always
ran in front of the engine, and he at once said that the dog was the
cause of the accident and that they must get rid of him. “It is enough
to make any horse shy to have a dog getting under his feet,” he said.

It was in vain for the firemen to explain that Jack had nothing
whatever to do with the accident; the chief refused to be convinced.

The order concerning Jack, however, was not obeyed, for how could they
part with their old friend Jack?

The driver was right in his opinion of the new horse. He certainly
_was_ skittish, and before long a second accident came. This time the
order to get rid of Jack must be obeyed, and the question arose what to
do with him.

Mr. Ledwell being the kind of man to whom everybody in trouble
appealed, Reordan at once sought him and told him the story. “We can’t
have old Jack killed,” he said, “because he is one of us!”

“Of course you can’t,” replied Mr. Ledwell, “we must find a good home
for him.”

“You see, sir, Jack has been in the business so many years he wouldn’t
feel at home anywhere except in an engine-house, and if we gave him to
any other company the chief would find it out, and ’twould be just as
bad. I don’t see what we can do. The poor fellow would grieve himself
to death if he wasn’t in the Fire Department.”

“And so he shall be,” replied Mr. Ledwell, heartily. “There is an
engine in the town where I live in the summer, and I’ll write and ask
them to take Jack. They will be sure to do it.”

Reordan’s face brightened. “It would be very kind of you, sir, and just
like you. After Jack got used to it, he’d be sure to feel at home, and
the men couldn’t help liking him.”

“Of course they will,” replied Mr. Ledwell, “and we shall look after
him too. Sam will make it his special business to see that he is well
cared for.”

So Jack’s fate was settled, and, with a heart even sadder at parting
than were those of the firemen, he was taken to his new home. Boxer was
quite desperate in his grief, and wanted to make an assault on every
one at once and settle the matter in that way; but gentle-hearted Jack
accepted his fate with the same fortitude that had led him to follow
through the thickest of the fire the fortunes of the firemen he so
loved.


CHAPTER FIFTEENTH


JACK’S new home was in a sea-coast town about an hour’s journey by
rail. A baggage car does not afford much opportunity for seeing the
country. Even if it did, Jack was not in a mood to enjoy it, for if
ever there were a homesick dog, Jack was one. When the train stopped
at Seaport and Jack was released, the wind was blowing fresh from the
ocean, and the sun was shining brightly.

When Nature does her best to make things bright for us, we feel her
cheery influence. So it was with Jack, and he began to look about him
with some interest. The engine-house which was to be Jack’s future
home was situated in the centre of the town. It was a small wooden
structure, very unlike the fine brick building where Jack had lived so
long. The men received him kindly and with interest, for Mr. Ledwell
had written a glowing account of Jack’s sagacity and usefulness, but
Jack did not feel happy. How could a dog of his years and experience be
expected to feel at home in a new place and among new people?

Jack showed his gratitude in his dog’s way for all the kindness shown
him, but his occupation was gone. He never ran with the engine again,
for he couldn’t go with his old company. In vain the men tried to
induce him to follow. He resisted every invitation, and watched the
engine start for a fire with perfect indifference.

“He is only homesick. He will be all right when he gets used to us,”
the men said; but they were mistaken. The faithful dog, who had
stood by the company of Engine 33 so long and valiantly, lost all
his interest in the Fire Department. When an alarm sounded, he would
sometimes start to his feet from force of habit, but his interest
went no further. He would sit and watch the engine leave without
manifesting the slightest concern.

When this account of Jack reached the ears of his old friends of
Company 33, they could hardly believe it, for they had supposed that
he would feel at home in an engine-house. If he had been a young dog,
he probably would have adapted himself quickly to the change, but the
saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is true in most cases.

One day one of the engine men of the town of Seaport went to the city,
and, in order to see what would come of it, took Jack with him. As they
neared the engine-house which had been Jack’s home for so many years, a
change came over him as he recognized familiar objects. His ears were
pricked, his tail no longer drooped, and he hurried along at a rapid
pace. When he reached the engine-house, he turned in at the entrance
and ran upstairs as if he had never been away. The day with his old
friends was a happy one, and Jack seemed as contented and as much at
home as of old. The subject of his not caring to follow the engine was
talked over, and one of the men, in order to try him, went below and
sounded the alarm. In an instant Jack was on his way downstairs in the
old way, and when they saw his disappointment at the trick played upon
him, they were sorry for him, for it made them understand how much the
Fire-Dog grieved for his old home.

After this visit Jack seemed more reconciled to his new surroundings.
He soon made the acquaintance of all the children in town, and endeared
himself to them by his gentle and affectionate ways. They began to
bring him the things dogs are known to relish, as the children who
lived near his old home used to do. Surrounded by so much kindness, no
dog could have been unhappy, and Jack gradually became accustomed to
his new life. It is true the excitement of running with the engine was
no longer his, but other pleasures came into his life. Before long he
became known to all the townspeople, and they began to tell anecdotes
of his sagacity.

Mr. Ledwell, who felt a pity for the faithful dog who was banished from
his old home, ordered the butcher in Seaport to furnish the Fire-Dog
with bones, and every morning at the same hour Jack walked sedately to
the butcher’s shop and got his bone. So it became a standing joke that
old Jack had an account at the butcher’s.

After his visit to the city, when Jack was beginning to cultivate the
social side of his nature by making and receiving calls, which he had
little time to do in the busy life at the city engine-house, he made
the acquaintance of a very affable young dog who greatly pleased him.
So much did he enjoy the new friendship that he went to the greatest
length a dog can go in the way of friendship,—he showed him the place
where he buried his bones and treated him to a generous supply. The new
acquaintance, however, proved to be unworthy of the trust reposed in
him, and went secretly to the spot and helped himself.

When the Fire-Dog discovered that the new friend had taken this mean
advantage of his generosity, he at once cut his acquaintance. When
they met, as they frequently did, the Fire-Dog always looked straight
ahead as if he didn’t see him at all. This course of behavior was very
humiliating to the culprit, and he felt the disgrace much more than any
other course Jack could have pursued, for nothing humiliates a human
being or an animal so much as to be ignored.

Now that Jack was no longer a business dog, it was astonishing how
much time he found in which to amuse himself. He had in the old days,
as we have seen, found no time to indulge in the social pleasures
in which dogs take so much delight, such as running the streets and
calling on dog friends. The only pleasures he then had were the visits
of the children who lived near the engine-house, an occasional call
from Boxer, or a chance meeting with some dog passing through the
city. As we have seen, he had not been popular with the dogs of his
neighborhood, on account of the jealousy his important position excited
in them. Now that he had retired to private life, this objection was
removed, and the Fire-Dog’s loving and amiable nature made him a host
of friends among his kind.

There were certain houses where Jack made daily calls. He went with
great regularity to these houses, as if he felt the care of them and
must see that everything was going on in a satisfactory manner. He
always took up his position on the door-steps or piazza and waited
patiently until some one invited him to enter. If nobody happened to
notice that he was there, it seemed to make no difference to Jack. He
would wait a reasonable time, and then take his leave, calling at the
next house on his list.

Still another pleasure fell to Jack’s lot. He all at once took up the
habit of going to church, and every Sunday Jack was to be seen at one
of the churches in Seaport. He slipped in quietly and took a modest
position in the back part of the church, where he was in nobody’s way.
He sat very still through the service, usually taking short naps during
the sermon, but he was always wide awake and attentive during the
singing, which apparently afforded him great enjoyment. He went to one
church after another, as if testing them to see which suited his taste
the best, and finally settled upon the Methodist, attending services
with great regularity. It was supposed to be the character of the music
which made Jack choose this denomination, for the cheerful, hopeful
vein that pervades the Methodist hymns seemed to be particularly
acceptable to him.

This church-going habit was, of course, no objection, as the
intelligent dog made no disturbance during service, and went and
came with the greatest propriety. Before long, however, the children
in the congregation discovered that Jack was a regular attendant at
church, and from that time there was a craning of necks to obtain a
look at the Fire-Dog, and whispered questions and other signs which
showed that the young members of the congregation were more intent
upon watching Jack than they were upon the service. When this state
of affairs became apparent, word was sent to the engine-house that
Jack must be kept at home on Sunday. So the following Sunday Jack was
locked up in the engine-house, and a miserable morning he passed,
softly whining to himself when he heard the church-bells summoning the
congregation.

The next Sunday morning when the firemen looked for Jack to shut him
up, the Fire-Dog was nowhere to be found. In vain they hunted and
called; there was no response. But Jack attended services that morning
at the Baptist Church. The following Saturday night Jack was secured,
and he passed the next day locked up in the engine-house, a very
unhappy dog; and the firemen thought they had at last found a way to
keep the Fire-Dog away from church, by securing him on Saturday night.
They were mistaken, however, for the next Saturday night not a trace
was to be found of knowing Jack. The next morning he slipped into the
Universalist Church as the swinging door was opened by a tardy arrival,
and he took up his old position in the corner. He was one of the first
to pass out of the open doors when the service was ended, and very few
knew of his presence.

After this, the firemen decided it was not much use to attempt to keep
Jack from attending church, so they let matters take their course; and
as he went sometimes to one and sometimes to another of the churches,
no further complaints were made. If he succeeded in slipping in when
some one was entering, he took advantage of the chance and entered;
but if no such opportunity offered, he seated himself outside where he
could hear the singing. When the congregation came out, he joined them
and walked sedately home.

After Jack’s departure, his old friend Boxer grieved for him long, and
seemed to take comfort in visiting the Fire-Dog’s old home. He passed
a great part of his time there, watching the men and the horses, and
gradually came to be there most of the time. He seemed to feel it his
duty to guard the property, and sat for hours in front of the house,
watching the pigeons and sparrows when they came for the food that was
regularly thrown out to them.

Here Boxer’s duty ended. He was observed to watch the engine start
off to a fire with great interest, bustling about while the hurried
preparations were going on, and barking himself hoarse with excitement
as the horses dashed out of the engine-house and disappeared down the
hill. He watched them with longing eyes, but could never be induced to
follow them, much as he seemed to long to do it. The men concluded that
he considered this had been his friend Jack’s privilege, and that he
was too loyal to his old friend to usurp his rights.

Boxer also took great pleasure in the visits of the children who still
came to the engine-house, and they soon became very fond of him,
although at first the youngest among them were rather afraid of his big
mouth and rather savage expression. Among his visitors were Sam and
Billy, and many choice morsels of food he received from their hands.

So we see that although he did not take the Fire-Dog’s place, he had a
place of his own in the hearts of the firemen and the young visitors
who came so often to the engine-house.


CHAPTER SIXTEENTH


BILLY’S mother was soon well enough to be taken to Mrs. Hanlon’s
pleasant home, and, surrounded by the comforts that kind woman knew
so well how to give, she improved rapidly in health and spirits. The
happiness of being once more with her blind boy did more than anything
else to restore her lost health, for, although but a short time had
elapsed since she awoke to consciousness after her severe illness and
learned that she was separated from her boy, the anxiety and grief of
her loss had delayed her recovery.

Her eyes now followed his every movement and change of expression, and
again and again Billy had to repeat the story of his experiences. Sam
continued to come every day to visit his friend, and the gay spirits
and energy he brought with him helped the sick woman on the road to
health. He often brought news of the Fire-Dog, too, and of Boxer, who
had established himself at the engine-house. He told them also about
the pigeons, the sparrows, the lively chickadees, and the other winter
inhabitants of the park, and Billy’s mother was just as interested in
them all as Billy himself was.

She could tell beautiful stories, too, of the time when she was a
little girl and lived on a big farm. Sam never wearied of hearing about
the calves and sheep and the clumsy oxen, who are so intelligent,
although their minds work so slowly. Billy’s mother, too, knew how to
draw pictures of all the animals she told them about; and although
Billy couldn’t see them, Sam could, and it made Billy very happy to
know that his mother could do something to give pleasure to the little
friend who had done so much for him.

“If I only could _see_, I think I could draw things,” Billy said one
day, “because I know just how they ought to go.”

“Do you think you could draw Jack?” asked Sam.

“I think I could,” replied Billy, “because my hands know how he looks.”

“Take a pencil and see how good a picture you can make,” said his
mother.

So Billy made a picture of the Fire-Dog, as he thought he looked,
and, considering that he was blind and had never been taught to use a
pencil, he did very well.

“It looks just like Jack, all but the spots,” said Sam, “but of course
you couldn’t make them because you couldn’t see them. I’ll paint them
in for you.”

After this, Billy began to make pictures of the things he could pass
his hands over, and it helped many an hour to pass pleasantly.

Soon came a time when the oculist whom Mr. Ledwell had consulted
about Billy’s eyes decided that the boy’s health was now sufficiently
established to make it safe to operate. So Billy was put to sleep and
the operation performed, but for many days afterwards he had to be kept
in a dark room. Without his mother to sit by him and take care of him,
this would have been a trying time for Billy; but with her by his side
he was perfectly contented to wait patiently for the time to come when
he should be like the seeing children.

All this time Sam was not allowed to see the blind boy, and the time
seemed very long to him. He had many boy playmates, but not one of them
was so dear to him as the little blind boy to whom he had so patiently
loaned his eyes. He was persuaded at last to try his new dog-cart, for
by this time the snow had disappeared, and his black pony with the
star on his forehead had been brought in from the country. There was a
new russet harness, too, that became the pony beautifully, and Sam was
allowed to drive alone in the park behind the big carriage, for the
pony was gentle and Sam a good driver.

At last came a day when Sam was told he could visit Billy, and he was
in a state of great excitement. “Do you suppose Billy can see yet?” he
asked his grandmamma.

“You must find out and tell me about it when you come back,” replied
Grandmamma; and Sam thought she looked just as she always did when she
had a pleasant surprise for him.

So off Sam started, and he hurried along at such a pace that Mary had
to almost run to keep up with him. As they approached the house, there
stood Billy at the parlor window, looking out from among the plants. As
Sam approached, he noticed that the blind boy did not stand still with
the patient look on his face and his eyes looking straight ahead in the
old way. His eyes followed Sam’s movements with an eager expression,
as those look who are not quite sure they recognize a friend. As Sam
ran up the steps, however, the blind boy’s face grew brighter, as if he
were now sure Sam was the one he thought he was.

“Billy can see! Billy can see!” he exclaimed excitedly. “I am sure he
can, Mary! Didn’t you see him look right at me and kind of smile?” and
he burst into the house and into the parlor.

As Sam entered, Billy was standing in the middle of the room quite
pale from excitement, but he didn’t say a word. He only looked at Sam
very earnestly, at his bright eyes and rosy cheeks and his sturdy
figure. He always before seemed so glad to see Sam and greeted him so
affectionately that Sam didn’t know what to think of the change in
Billy’s manner, which was shy, as if a strange boy had come to see him.

“You can see now, can’t you, Billy?” asked Sam.

“Yes,” replied Billy.

“Aren’t you glad you can see?” asked Sam; for he was disappointed to
find that Billy did not express more joy at seeing him, when he himself
was so glad for Billy. “Didn’t you know me when you saw me?”

“I thought perhaps it was you, but I wasn’t sure,” replied Billy.

[Illustration]

“I should think you’d be as glad as anything, now that you can see,”
said Sam.

Billy’s mother, who had seen the meeting between the two children,
thought it time to explain matters to Sam.

“You see, Sam,” she said, “everything is so new to Billy that he must
become accustomed to seeing.”

“He always used to know me just as soon as I came,” replied Sam, “and
now he acts as if he didn’t know me at all.”

“He knew you by your step and your voice,” replied Billy’s mother, “but
he didn’t know how you really looked before. His mind made a picture of
you, but it was so different from the real _you_ that he must get used
to the new one.”

Sam understood now why Billy had looked at him as if he did not know
him. “Of course he didn’t know me, because he had never _seen_ me
before,” he said. “I wonder what sort of a looking fellow he thought I
was. What color did you think my eyes were, Billy?”

“I don’t know what seeing people call it,” replied Billy.

“You see, he will have to learn the names of the colors and a great
many other things, too,” explained Billy’s mother.

“I should think he would know them,” said Sam. “Anne is only four years
old, and she has known them ever so long.”

“Your little sister can see, you know,” said Billy’s mother.

“I suppose it makes a difference,” said Sam. “He’ll soon learn, though,
won’t he?”

A new world was opened to Billy, and there were a great many things
besides the names of colors for him to learn. Everything about him
seemed so wonderful! The beauty about us, which those who are gifted
with sight take as a matter of course, filled this newly awakened soul
with wonder and admiration. The blue sky and the trees, whose buds were
now bursting into their new life, the birds, and the blossoming plants
in the parlor window, were a source of constant delight to him. His
greatest pleasure was in drawing the objects that most pleased him.
These were so well done that Mr. Ledwell gave him a box of paints, and
the boy was so happy in this new work it was hard to get him to leave
it long enough to take the exercise he so much needed.

“I want to see Billy as sturdy as Sam,” Mr. Ledwell said to his mother.
“He must go to school and play with other boys, or we shall have a
girl-boy, which we don’t want. There is nothing that makes a boy so
independent as roughing it with other boys.”

“I am afraid they will ridicule him for being different from them,”
said Billy’s mother. “You know he has been kept from other children on
account of his blindness.”

“I know it, and that is why he needs the companionship of other boys,”
said Mr. Ledwell.

“But boys are so rough, and sometimes they are unkind to sensitive boys
like Billy.”

“Boys are not unkind as a general thing; they are only thoughtless.
Billy will become over-sensitive if you keep him tied to your
apron-strings. He will have to meet all kinds of people, you know.”

So one morning Billy was sent to school with Sam, who called for him.
As Billy’s mother, standing at the open door, watched the two boys
start off together, the contrast between them was very marked, and she
felt that Mr. Ledwell’s advice was of the very best. Billy, with the
blue glasses that he was obliged to wear when out of doors, his blond
hair falling in curly rings about his delicate face, which was radiant
with smiles because he was at last going to a “seeing school” like
other boys, did indeed have the air of a boy who has not mingled with
other boys.

Sam trudged along on the outside of the sidewalk, his strong, sturdy
figure in striking contrast to Billy’s slender one. Billy’s mother
watched them so long as they were in sight. Then she slowly entered the
house, saying to herself,—

“Poor boy, what a hard time he will have before he gets to be like
other boys!”

Meanwhile, the two boys went on, Sam feeling very important to be
entrusted with the care of Billy, and chatting all the way about his
school-life. His grandmother had sent Mary with him, fearing the two
boys would be careless in crossing the streets, but Sam’s dignity was
hurt at this precaution.

“I am not a baby, Mary, to have a nurse tagging around after me,” he
said, as soon as he was out of sight of his grandmother’s window, “so
you can just go back again.”

This Mary did not dare do, as she had directions to keep with the
boys; so after a serious conversation between her and her independent
charge, they compromised matters in this way: Mary was to be allowed
to follow at a respectful distance on the opposite sidewalk, provided
she would not attempt to speak to Sam or make any sign to show that she
had any connection with him. In this way Mary could keep an eye on her
two charges and be on hand if her services were required. Sam threw
occasional side glances in Mary’s direction to see if she were keeping
the contract faithfully.

The two boys proceeded on their way for some time, Sam using great
caution in piloting his friend across the streets, for Billy was afraid
of being run over by the teams and carriages which were so constantly
coming. The city sights were so new to the poor child, it was hard for
him to calculate how long it would take for the teams he saw coming
their way to reach them. This gave him a timid, undecided air, and Sam
would often say when Billy stopped, fearing to cross, “Come along,
Billy, there’s plenty of time to get over.” At this Billy would gain
courage and start, but he always reached the other side before Sam did.

“Whatever you do, Billy, don’t ever stop half-way across and run back
again,” Sam said, when Billy had been particularly nervous. “If you do,
you’ll be sure to be run over, because the drivers don’t know what you
are going to do. It would be better to stand still and let them turn
out for you. They won’t run over you if you stand still.” And Billy,
who thought Sam knew all about such things, promised to take his advice.

At the next corner they met a group of older boys on their way to
school. They were in the mood to find amusement in anything that came
their way, and as soon as they caught sight of the two little boys, one
of their number called out, “Hullo, Blue Glasses!”

The color came into Billy’s cheeks, and Sam looked very defiant.

“Trying to be a girl? Look at his nice curls! Ain’t they sweet?” said
another.

“What’s your name, Sissy?” called the largest of the group, a boy
several years older than the two little boys. At the same time he took
hold of Billy and made him stop. “What’s your name, I say!”

The slight and sensitive Billy, tightly held by the larger and stronger
boy, was about to reply meekly, when Sam called out, “Don’t you tell
him your name! It’s none of his business what your name is!”

“Oh, it isn’t, is it! He shall tell me his name and you shall tell me
yours, too, and tell it first;” and letting Billy go, he seized Sam by
the collar. “Come, out with it! Now what is it?”

“It’s none of your business,” replied Sam, stoutly, struggling to free
himself from the strong grasp of the boy.

“Come, let the little fellow alone,” said one of his companions.

“He’s got to answer my question first. Come, youngster, what’s your
name?” and he gave him a shake as he spoke.

“You let me alone!” cried Sam, who was working himself into a very
excited state, and trying his best to free himself. “You just wait
until I get hold of you!”

Billy had been standing helplessly by, wanting to assist Sam, but not
knowing how to do it. At last, when he saw his best friend struggling
in the grasp of the big boy, he suddenly became desperate, and,
throwing down his luncheon basket, flew at the big boy and began
hammering at his back with his weak fists.

All this had taken place in a much shorter time than it takes to relate
it, and Mary, from the other side of the street, had seen what was
going on, but she feared that Sam would resent her interference, so she
watched to see that matters did not go too far. When Billy made his
sudden attack, she quickly crossed over and released Sam from the big
boy’s grasp.

“It’s a fine business for a big fellow like you to be after picking a
quarrel with two little fellows! Why don’t you take one of your own
size?”

The boy did really seem to be ashamed of himself, particularly as his
friends did not uphold him, and he joined them in rather a shamefaced
manner. Sam, however, was not satisfied with the settlement of the
quarrel, and made a rush after him, but Mary caught him in time and
held him fast.

“I’ll tell you what _your_ name is,” he shouted, while he struggled to
free himself from Mary’s tight grasp. “It’s a mean old bully! And you
just wait till the next time I get a chance, that’s all!”

“It’s a shame for little boys to be fighting like the beasts that don’t
know any better,” said Mary. “What would your grandmamma say if she
came to hear of it? She would think it was just awful!”

“I don’t know about that,” said Sam, shrewdly.

Mary did not cross to the other side of the street again, but kept with
her charges, and, until the schoolhouse was reached, improved the time
in lecturing the two boys on the sin of fighting. Billy listened very
meekly, and even Sam received the lecture in silence; but when Mary
left them at the door, he said very seriously,—

“Mary, I sha’n’t _begin_ a fight, but if a fellow hits me he’s got to
look out!”

When Mary on her return related the story to Sam’s grandmamma and
grandpapa, and told how valiantly Billy had gone to the rescue of his
friend, Sam’s grandpapa only smiled with his eyes and said, “He’ll do!”


CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH


BILLY’S mother was now so well that she was eager to begin work. “You
have done so much for us,” she said to Mr. Ledwell, “that I cannot
accept any more.”

“Have you thought of anything special to do?” asked Mr. Ledwell.

“I have thought a great deal about it,” she replied, “and I should be
glad of any work that will support us. Since I have been so long idle
I have realized, as I never did before, the fact that there are many
children thrown upon the charity of the world as my boy was, but very
few fall into such kind hands as he did. There are institutions to care
for just such children, and if I could get a situation in one of them
I should put my whole heart into the work, remembering the helpless
position my boy was in. In caring for other forsaken children I would
work off some of the deep sense of gratitude I feel.”

“It is a good scheme,” replied Mr. Ledwell, “and we will try to find
a place for you. Feeling as you do, you are just the one to look
after the poor little waifs. It takes time, though, to obtain such a
position, and meantime I can give you employment in my business.”

So Billy’s mother began work at once, and at the end of the first week
was able to hand to Mrs. Hanlon a sum for her own and Billy’s board.

Billy gained in strength and health every day, and soon was able to lay
aside the blue spectacles.

“I should think you would have your hair cut just as short as it can
be,” Sam one day suggested to his friend. “You see, it curls so that
the fellows think it makes you look like a girl.”

So Billy gave his mother no peace until his hair was cut so short that
there was no chance for it to form the curly rings to which the other
boys so much objected, and Sam pronounced it a great improvement.

With the short hair Billy also acquired an air of confidence which made
him look more like other boys, and he was no longer singled out as a
butt for their rough jokes. He learned very fast, and his love for
drawing helped to make him popular; for on stormy days, when the boys
could not go out at recess, it was a great pleasure to have Billy draw
pictures for them. His greatest pleasure was to draw on the blackboard,
and his sketches, done with a bold, free hand, often gave as much
pleasure to the teacher as they did to the pupils.

Before long came the time for Sam to go with his grandparents to
their country home. Such good friends had the two boys become, that a
separation would have been very hard for both. They were so unlike that
each had a good influence on the other. Sam, full of spirit and health,
would much rather spend his time out of doors than in learning his
lessons, while Billy liked nothing better than to sit indoors, working
hard at his drawing, or conscientiously studying his lessons, that he
might keep up with the other children who had not been deprived of the
use of their eyes.

Mr. Ledwell, who looked out so well for every one, proposed to Billy’s
mother that she should live in a little house on his grounds that had
been built for his gardener’s family. The present gardener, however,
had no family, and lived with the other men employed on the place, and
the house would make a cosey, comfortable home for Billy and his mother.

The latter by this time had obtained the situation she so much
desired,—which was to look after homeless children. Her duty was to
take these little waifs to homes that were willing to receive them,
and to see that the little ones were happy and well cared for after
being placed. This, of course, took her away from home all through the
day, and she often returned tired from her day’s work. Giving so much
motherly care to the neglected ones, who needed it so sadly, prevented
her from giving her own boy the care he ought to have, and a pleasant
way out of the difficulty was found by having good Mrs. Hanlon come
down to the little cottage and take care of it and of Billy. In this
way Billy was not neglected, and his mother could earn money for their
support.

It was a happy day for the two boys when they alighted at the little
station of Seaport. It was quite a distance to Sam’s grandpapa’s place,
so they drove there in one of the station carriages. Billy noticed how
glad all were to see Sam. Everybody seemed to know him, and to have
a pleasant word for him, from the station master down to the colored
porter. Sam was just as glad to see them, too, and asked after their
families and how they had been through the long, cold winter.

It made Billy very happy to see how much everybody loved Sam, and for
every kind word and look given to his friend he was more gratified
than if he had received them himself. The grateful boy never forgot for
a moment how kindly and generously his friend had received him when he
was blind and forsaken.

As they passed the different houses in the village, Sam was kept busy
in hailing old acquaintances and hearing their cordial “Glad to see you
back again.”

They passed the engine-house, and there on the sidewalk in front of it
lay Jack the Fire-Dog. Although he had never _seen_ him before, Billy
knew him even before Sam’s keen eyes discovered him. At the boys’
call the dog pricked up his ears and gazed searchingly at them; then,
with all the power of his eloquent eyes and wagging tail, he tried to
express his joy at meeting these old friends.

Of course the boys couldn’t go by without stopping for a moment,—no
human boys could do that. So out they piled in a hurry, and before
the carriage had come to a stop they were hugging and caressing their
faithful friend. “Does he look anything as you thought he did, Billy?”
asked Sam.

“Yes, just, only a great deal handsomer. Do you suppose he knows I am a
seeing boy now, Sam?” asked Billy, anxiously.

“I shouldn’t wonder if he did, because I saw him looking at your eyes
awful sharp the first thing.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if he did, either,” said one of the firemen who had
witnessed the meeting between the old friends. “He’s awfully knowing.”

They could not stop so long as they would have liked, however, because
the driver of the station carriage was in a hurry to get back; so they
had to leave the Fire-Dog. “You shall come to see us every day,” Sam
called out, as the carriage started again, for the dog’s wistful eyes
said how sorry he was to have them go; and the Fire-Dog did not wait
for a second invitation, but presented himself about five minutes after
the boys had reached home.

“First of all, I must take you about to show you everything on the
place,” Sam said to Billy. So off they started, the boys followed
closely by Jack, who seemed much older than he had in the days when he
used to run with Engine 33.

First of all, there were the stables to be visited, where in a paddock
was the black pony with the star on his forehead. He came trotting up
to the fence to see the boys and rub his nose against them and beg for
sugar. They had no sugar to give him, but a few handfuls of grass did
just as well. After he found they had no more for him, he lay down and
rolled over; then, after shaking himself, he came for more grass.

These stables were wonderful places, and had in them everything that
boys, and most girls, love. There was a new colt only a few weeks old,
but as tall as the black pony with the star in his forehead, although
his legs were longer and not so prettily formed, and he had a short,
bushy tail. Clumsy as he looked, however, he could run fast, for, after
looking anxiously at the boys for an instant with his large, mild
eyes, he darted off at full speed to join his mother at the other end
of the field.

There was a litter of pups belonging to one of the grooms, young
bull-terrier pups, with little fat, round bodies and very blunt, pink
noses; and the mother dog evidently thought amiable Jack a fierce
ogre, who wanted to eat them up, for she flew at him with great fury
when he only wanted to admire them. So she had to be shut up in the
harness-room, where she tore at the door and growled and barked so long
as the boys and Jack stayed near her pups.

There were two little kittens, too, and they also seemed to consider
innocent Jack a dangerous sort of fellow, for they arched their backs
and spit at him whenever he happened to look their way.

When the stables had been explored, the two boys and Jack ran down to
the beach. The tide was out, and they could walk far out on the smooth
sand. This was very beautiful, but Sam’s favorite nook was the little
cove where the fiddler-crabs lived. He was never tired of watching them
at low tide, and trying to find out whether each had his own particular
hole to hide in, or whether they darted into the first one they came to
when surprised.

The two boys each singled out a crab and tried to keep his eyes on him
to watch his movements, but they all looked so much alike that it was
very confusing, and after an hour spent in this way Sam was no wiser
than he was before.

Then the shells that had been washed up in the hard storms of the
winter before, how beautiful they were, and how exciting it was to pick
them out of the line of seaweed in which they were entangled! Billy had
never dreamed of such pleasures, and they were as good as new to Sam,
now that he had a companion to enjoy them with him. Thus the two happy
boys spent the forenoon, while Jack wandered about the beach, sniffing
into holes and examining the skeletons of the horse-shoes and crabs
that had been thrown up by the winter storms. They found many delicate
skeletons of baby horse-shoes, some not much larger than a silver
quarter of a dollar, and perfect in shape.

“We must make a collection of curiosities,” Billy said,—“shells and
horse-shoes and all such things.”

“I can show you where there are beautiful stones,” said Sam. “I have
got a little bookcase where we can keep them, and we can label them
just as they do in the Museum.”

As Sam spoke, the clear notes of a horn were heard from the direction
of the house. “That’s for me,” said Sam. “They always blow that horn
when they want me, and I guess it’s about time for lunch.”

So the two boys went toward the house, carrying as many of their
“curiosities” as they could take, and Jack followed.

The fresh sea air had sharpened the appetites of the boys, and of Jack,
too, but they spent as little time at the table as possible, they were
in such a hurry to go back to their play on the beach.

In these pleasures the days passed so rapidly that Sam’s birthday came
around before he had thought it was anywhere near the time for it. Jack
appeared every day with great regularity, and never let them out of
his sight. Even while they were eating their meals, he lay under the
dining-room windows, in order that he might be on hand if they required
his services.

“What should you like to do to celebrate your birthday, Sam?” asked his
grandpapa one morning at the breakfast table.

“I know what I should _like_ to do,” replied Sam, who usually knew just
what he wanted, “but I don’t suppose there is any chance of my doing
it.”

“What is it, Sam?”

“Well, you know those children who were so good to Billy? The ones you
gave the cakes to, you know. Billy and I have been thinking how much
they would like to be here and run on the beach and see the colt and
the puppies. Billy said if he had lots of money he would just send for
them to come here and have a good time. It is awfully hot in that part
of the city where they live, Billy says, and it smells awfully bad,
too.”

“I know it does, Sam,” replied Grandpapa, very seriously, “and I wish
we could take all the children out of the hot city and let them run
about in the fields and on the beach as you and Billy do.”

“I _knew_ it couldn’t be done,” said Sam with a sigh.

“We can’t take care of _all_ the children in the city, Sam,” replied
Grandpapa, “but I think we can manage to give these three a taste of
the country.”

“Oh, Grandpapa!” exclaimed Sam, and he was so overcome with joy at
the prospect that he couldn’t find words to say how happy he was. His
grandmother was very particular about his table manners, so he said,
“Please excuse me a minute, Grandmamma,” and, jumping down from his
chair, ran up to his grandfather and put his arms about him and hugged
him until his face was quite red from the effort. “I think you are the
very kindest man I ever saw, Grandpapa,” he said.


CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH


MR. LEDWELL was fully as kind as his little grandson thought him. That
very day he went to several of the townspeople to ascertain if any of
them were willing to take three city children as boarders for a few
weeks. At last he found what he wanted. A young married woman with no
children of her own was glad to oblige the man who was such a favorite
with everybody, and at the same time earn a little money; for money is
scarce in the country, where the means for earning it are so much less
than in the city.

On a beautiful morning about a week later, the three children, beaming
with happiness, alighted at Seaport station, to find Sam and Billy on
the platform looking eagerly for them. Yet when they met, the natural
shyness that children feel at meeting those whom they seldom see,
overcame the three new-comers, and they found no words to express the
pleasure and gratitude that was in their hearts, although their happy
faces spoke for them. Sam, always business-like, was the first to speak
and conduct them to the wagonette which was to take them to their
boarding-place. When they were seated in the wagonette, facing one
another, Maysie at last found voice,—

“Hallo, Billy!” she said, her face wreathed in smiles.

They were all a little shy of Sam at first, but they soon felt at
their ease, for he pointed out the objects of interest as they drove
along, and told them about the colt, the puppies, the kittens, and the
wonderful things they would find on the beach.

“Is it hot in the city?” asked Sam.

“Just!” replied Johnny, briefly.

“I saw a horse that was killed entirely by the hot sun,” said Maysie.

“He wasn’t dead, Maysie,” said Johnny; “it is just overcome he was.
They took him off in a big cart to the hospital.”

Soon the engine-house was passed, and there sat Jack, who knew them
as soon as they came in sight. Sam insisted on taking him in, and
Jack, who seldom had the pleasure of a drive, was very glad of the
opportunity.

“He looks like the dog I saw to the fire that day I told you of,” said
Maysie.

“It can’t be the same one,” replied Hannah, “for that one runs with one
of the city engines, and he wouldn’t be so far from home.”

“But it _is_ the same,” said Billy; and always glad to tell how
faithful Jack saved his life on the night of the fire, he told the
story to them, and how Jack happened to be so far away from his old
home.

When they stopped at the pretty farm-house where the city children were
to stay, a pleasant-faced woman came out to meet them and show them
the rooms they were to occupy, and Sam and Billy left them there,
promising to come for them in the afternoon, to show them all the
things they had told them about.

The sweet air, the green fields, and the singing birds were what these
city children had never before enjoyed, and nothing was lost on them.
There was only one drawback to their perfect happiness, and that was
the fact that Mother was not there to enjoy it with them.

“If Mother could only be here, too,” said Hannah, “how beautiful it
would be!”

“But she said she should enjoy it just as much as we did, when we got
home and told her about it,” said Maysie.

“I know she said so,” replied Hannah, “but it ain’t like smelling the
beautiful air and seeing the fields and things.”

“But she won’t have so much work to do while we are away, and there
won’t be no noise nor nothing,” said Maysie, who always took a hopeful
view of things.

“The house will seem awful lonesome to her,” said Johnny, whom
Hannah’s remark had made a little homesick.

“She told us to have as good a time as we could,” said Maysie, “and
I’ve made up my mind to see everything and tell her all about it. Do
you mind how pleased Mother is when we tell her things we’ve seen?”

“I know,” said Hannah with a sigh, “but I wish Mother could be here all
the same.”

“But she _can’t_, you know,” said hopeful Maysie, “so what’s the use of
fretting about what can’t be helped?”

“Maysie is right,” said Hannah, after a moment’s silence, for she began
to see into what an unhappy mood they were drifting. “The best thing
we can do is to get as strong and well as we can, and then we can help
Mother more when we get home.”

“That’s so,” replied Johnny, once more cheerful; “and it’s the
pocketful of shells and nice stones I’ll take home to her,—those the
boy told us of.”

“And the day we go home we’ll take her a big bunch of the flowers the
fields is full of,” said Hannah.

“And the kitten the boy promised me!” said Maysie.

“I don’t believe Father would let us keep a kitten,” said Johnny. “You
know about the little dog!”

“Kittens isn’t dogs,” replied Maysie, confidently. “I know he wouldn’t
send a kitten out on us.”

“I guess he wouldn’t mind a kitten,” said Hannah, “because they keep
the mice away. I heard him tell Mother one day that she ought to get a
cat or the mice would eat us out of house and home.”

So they agreed that it would be safe to introduce a kitten into their
home, and in talking over the pleasant surprises they intended to give
Mother they were soon their old cheerful selves.

Only those who have always lived in a city can understand fully the
state of bliss these children lived in during their stay in the
country. Hunting for eggs in the hen-house and barn, discovering
stolen nests, going to the pasture for the cows, and watching the
process of milking, riding to the hayfield in the empty hay-rigging,
and, after treading down the load, making a deep nest in the hay and
riding back to the barn,—particularly enjoying the jolt as the heavy
wagon went over the high threshold,—then the pleasure of sliding down
from the top of the high load into the farmer’s arms!—that was the best
of all.

In these simple country pleasures, in the company of Sam and Billy, and
the enjoyment of Mr. Ledwell’s beautiful place, the days flew rapidly
by, leaving as they went traces of the fresh air and sunlight on their
blooming cheeks and sun-browned skins. Almost before they knew it, the
time for which they had been invited had passed, and their faces grew
long when they thought of leaving these blissful scenes. The calves,
the hens, and the pigs—especially the new litter of pigs, with their
pink skins and funny little wrinkled noses—how could they make up their
minds to leave them?

Then, just when everything looked most hopeless, came a pleasant
surprise. The farmer’s wife, with whom they had been boarded, said she
had become so attached to them, and had found them so helpful and such
good company, that she wanted them to stay two whole weeks more; yes,
she did! And she said they were the best-mannered children she had ever
had in her house, besides!

These compliments pleased Sam and Billy as much as they did the three
children to whom they referred, and little Maysie resolved to repeat
them to Mother the next time she was reproved for her manners.

As for Jack the Fire-dog, after the arrival of the three city children
he spent more time than ever on Mr. Ledwell’s premises. Since he could
not be with his old engine and his beloved company, he could feel
interest in no other engine; but there were the dear children, and
Jack had always been accustomed to the company of children and could
not live without them. So by degrees Jack established himself on the
Ledwell estate, and from sleeping there on extremely hot nights came
to sleep there every night. It was very pleasant sleeping under the
large elms, with the sea-breezes wafted to him, or on cool nights,
in the roomy stable, where he could smell the sweet hay overhead and
hear the bull pups nestling in their sleep in their box from the room
beyond; for the mother of the pups had become reconciled to Jack since
he had no intention of hurting her babies, and even allowed him to play
with them, now they had grown large and strong.

It was a very fortunate thing for the pups and their mother and the
horses and every one on the place, too, that Jack had seen fit to take
up his abode on the premises—but we will tell what happened.

One night when the man whose duty it was to close the stable was about
to lock up, he caught sight of Jack lying under the large elm-tree in
front of the stable.

“‘Twill be cold, old boy, before morning,” he said to Jack as he held
the door open, “and I advise you to come inside.”

Jack had been thinking the same thing himself, so he got up and went
in to his bed in the harness-room. The heavy door was rolled to and
locked, and the man went upstairs to his room on the floor above.

A night-watchman is usually employed where valuable horses are kept,
and usually there was one on Mr. Ledwell’s place, but for the past two
nights he had been at his home ill from a cold, and the premises were
left unguarded.

Jack curled up in his comfortable bed, listening for a while to the
heavy steps of the men overhead, the occasional stamping from the
horses’ stalls, or the rattling of their halter chains against their
iron mangers; to the occasional nestling of the pups as they stirred in
their sleep and crowded one another in their attempts to obtain more
room; to the rising wind that shook the drooping boughs of the big
elm outside. It was very pleasant to listen to these sounds from his
comfortable bed in the harness-room, and, while listening to them, Jack
fell asleep. He had acquired the habit of sleeping with one ear open
during his old life in the engine-house, and the habit was so firmly
rooted that it would never leave him. This night he awoke every few
minutes, starting at every sound. Once he jumped to his feet, dreaming
that he was in the old engine-house, and that the gong had just struck.

It was no gong, however, but only the sharp noise made by one of the
horses as he gave his halter chain a sudden jerk, and Jack was wide
awake now and listening with all his might.

What makes the Fire-Dog so restless, and why does he keep his keen nose
up in the air, sniffing so eagerly, then suddenly start to his feet and
run about the floor of the large stable, peering in at every corner
and cranny, and then with a whine dart up the staircase leading to the
floor above? The wire door used in summer time swings inward, and as
Jack bounds against it, it flies open and he stands inside. It is a
good-sized room with two beds in it, the occupants fast asleep.

There is no doubt now as to what brought Jack here. A decided smell
of smoke pervades the room, increasing every moment, oozing through
the crevices of the partition which separates this room from the lofts
beyond, where the hay is stored. The turned-down lamp that is always
kept lighted at night, in case of a sudden call, shows dimly through
the gathering haze, and the Fire-Dog knows that there is not a moment
to lose. With one leap he stands by the side of the man who let him
into the stable a few hours before. He is fast asleep, and Jack’s
loud barks only cause him to stir and turn over in his sleep. But the
Fire-Dog has not been brought up in an engine-house for nothing, and
he knows the horrors of a fire at night. He now pounces upon the heavy
sleeper, pawing him frantically with his strong paws, while his loud
barking is shrill with the warning he tries so hard to express.

He succeeds at last in rousing the heavy sleeper and at the same time
the occupants of the other bed. They take in the situation at once,
and in an instant are on their feet. They snatch up some articles
of clothing and run for the stairs, putting them on as they go. The
rolling door is thrown open, and their voices send out the startling
cry of “Fire! Fire!”

The loud cry is borne on the night air to the stable beyond, where the
farm-horses and cows are kept, and where other men are sleeping, and
there the alarm is taken up and sent on to the house, where the family
are fast asleep.

There is nothing that arouses one more suddenly and fills one with
more alarm than the cry of “Fire!” in the middle of the night. In a
few minutes all the people living on the place are aroused. The alarm
is sounded for the only engine in town, but what can one engine a mile
distant accomplish when a stable filled with hay is on fire?

The first thought is for the horses; and they, terrified at the noise
and excitement and fast-gaining fire, refuse to leave their stalls,
running back when they are released so soon as they catch sight of
the flames. So blankets and carriage robes are hastily caught up and
thrown over their heads, that they may not see the flames, and in that
way they are led through the burning stable in safety and turned loose
in the field, where they stand watching the commotion about them and
snorting with terror.

Then the carriages are run out and harnesses caught down from the pegs
where they hang, and carried to a place of safety. Meanwhile the fire
steadily sweeps on its way, bursting through the roof and sending
volumes of smoke and flame high up into the dark sky. The big elm that
drooped its graceful branches over the burning building, shivers and
moans like a live creature in pain, as the tongues of flame lick its
fresh green leaves and shrivel them with their hot breath.

Every man and woman on the place is awake and on the spot, and the high
wind is taking the smoke and flames of the burning building directly in
the line of the stable where the farm-horses and cows are kept. These
are taken out blindfolded, as the horses in the other stable have been,
for the heat from the burning hay, the summer’s heavy crop, is intense,
and the strong wind hurls blazing embers against the shingled roof.

It is evident that this stable will go like the other before long,
and men are on the roof, stamping out the fire as often as it catches
on the dry shingles. Then they do what is often done in country towns
where the fire department is of little use. Two lines of men and women
stand between the farm-stable and the well, while pails are hurriedly
filled with water and passed from hand to hand along one line until
they finally are handed up to the men on the roof, to be dashed over
the heated shingles. Then the empty pails are passed down the other
line to the well. In this way, the roof is kept wet and the burning
embers are made harmless. Before the pails have been passed along the
lines many times, the engine comes tearing up the driveway, the horses
at full speed, and draws up before the burning stable. It is too late
to be of any service there, but the other buildings can be saved, and
the hose is quickly unwound and attached to the well. The deep thuds
of the working engine are soon heard, and the hose is turned upon the
farm-stable. Every throb of the engine sends the water higher and
higher, until a broad, full stream strikes the ridgepole and sends
rivulets running over the surface of the slanting roof. In less than
five minutes more service is done than the lines of hard-working men
and women could accomplish in an hour.

All this time the Fire-Dog, but for whose warning many lives would have
been lost, is going in and out among the workers, with the same air of
responsibility that he had always worn in the old days when he went to
fires with Company 33. He threads his way among the crowd, which has
collected, exactly as he used to, looking about to assure himself that
everything is as it should be. When Sam and Billy appear on the scene,
excited and awestruck, he stations himself by their side and never
leaves them for an instant, as if he fears harm might come to them if
he were not there to watch over them.

The anxiety comes to an end at last. The stable where the fire started
is a pile of black and smoking embers, but the farm-stable with its
sheds and paddocks is saved, and not a life lost, even to the kittens
and puppies; and of old Jack, whose sagacity has brought this about,
what a hero they make when the story is made known! The children cannot
love him any more, because they already love him as much as they can,
but every man and woman on the place has a kind word and a caress for
the faithful Fire-Dog. If he were not the most modest dog that ever
lived, his head would certainly be turned, for the facts even reach
the newspapers, and the whole story is told that everybody may read
it. It does not make him one bit conceited, the dear old Fire-Dog, and
he would do the same thing right over again, even if every hair on his
body should be singed. When, however, a handsome collar with a broad
brass plate, on which is engraved in large letters

       JACK THE FIRE-DOG

         PRESENTED BY

    HIS GRATEFUL FRIENDS,

is placed on his neck, then you may be sure his heart swells with pride
and gratitude.

If only there were time enough, how we should like to tell a little
more about Jack’s friends,—how Sam grew up to be a man very like
his grandfather and made a great many people happy; how Billy grew
strong and manly and at last became an artist and was able to make a
comfortable home for his mother; how the three city children went home
well and happy and came back for many summers, until Johnny was old
enough to take a position in Mr. Ledwell’s business, where he made
himself so useful that he rose a little higher in position each year;
how helpful Hannah became to Mother, and what good care she took of the
pretty house to which they moved in the beautiful town of Seaport;
how Maysie turned out to be a very capable business woman; how Father
enjoyed the new home in the country, and did not so often come home
tired as he used to in the city.

We can only hint briefly at these things, however, for it is time to
say good-bye to the dear old Fire-Dog and his friends.


Sample text: 28
﻿CHAPTER I. ONLY THE GUARDIAN

American tourists, sure appreciators of all that is ancient and
picturesque in England, invariably come to a halt, holding their breath
in a sudden catch of wonder, as they pass through the half-ruinous
gateway which admits to the Close of Wrychester. Nowhere else in England
is there a fairer prospect of old-world peace. There before their eyes,
set in the centre of a great green sward, fringed by tall elms and giant
beeches, rises the vast fabric of the thirteenth-century Cathedral, its
high spire piercing the skies in which rooks are for ever circling and
calling. The time-worn stone, at a little distance delicate as lacework,
is transformed at different hours of the day into shifting shades of
colour, varying from grey to purple: the massiveness of the great nave
and transepts contrasts impressively with the gradual tapering of
the spire, rising so high above turret and clerestory that it at last
becomes a mere line against the ether. In morning, as in afternoon, or
in evening, here is a perpetual atmosphere of rest; and not around the
great church alone, but in the quaint and ancient houses which fence in
the Close. Little less old than the mighty mass of stone on which their
ivy-framed windows look, these houses make the casual observer feel
that here, if anywhere in the world, life must needs run smoothly. Under
those high gables, behind those mullioned windows, in the beautiful
old gardens lying between the stone porches and the elm-shadowed lawn,
nothing, one would think, could possibly exist but leisured and pleasant
existence: even the busy streets of the old city, outside the crumbling
gateway, seem, for the moment, far off.

In one of the oldest of these houses, half hidden behind trees and
shrubs in a corner of the Close, three people sat at breakfast one fine
May morning. The room in which they sat was in keeping with the old
house and its surroundings--a long, low-ceilinged room, with oak
panelling around its walls, and oak beams across its roof--a room of
old furniture, and, old pictures, and old books, its antique atmosphere
relieved by great masses of flowers, set here and there in old china
bowls: through its wide windows, the casements of which were thrown wide
open, there was an inviting prospect of a high-edged flower garden, and,
seen in vistas through the trees and shrubberies, of patches of the west
front of the Cathedral, now sombre and grey in shadow. But on the garden
and into this flower-scented room the sun was shining gaily through the
trees, and making gleams of light on the silver and china on the table
and on the faces of the three people who sat around it.

Of these three, two were young, and the third was one of those men
whose age it is never easy to guess--a tall, clean-shaven, bright-eyed,
alert-looking man, good-looking in a clever, professional sort of way, a
man whom no one could have taken for anything but a member of one of the
learned callings. In some lights he looked no more than forty: a strong
light betrayed the fact that his dark hair had a streak of grey in
it, and was showing a tendency to whiten about the temples. A
strong, intellectually superior man, this, scrupulously groomed and
well-dressed, as befitted what he really was--a medical practitioner
with an excellent connection amongst the exclusive society of a
cathedral town. Around him hung an undeniable air of content and
prosperity--as he turned over a pile of letters which stood by his
plate, or glanced at the morning newspaper which lay at his elbow, it
was easy to see that he had no cares beyond those of the day, and that
they--so far as he knew then--were not likely to affect him greatly.
Seeing him in these pleasant domestic circumstances, at the head of
his table, with abundant evidences of comfort and refinement and modest
luxury about him, any one would have said, without hesitation, that Dr.
Mark Ransford was undeniably one of the fortunate folk of this world.

The second person of the three was a boy of apparently seventeen--a
well-built, handsome lad of the senior schoolboy type, who was devoting
himself in business-like fashion to two widely-differing pursuits--one,
the consumption of eggs and bacon and dry toast; the other, the study
of a Latin textbook, which he had propped up in front of him against the
old-fashioned silver cruet. His quick eyes wandered alternately between
his book and his plate; now and then he muttered a line or two to
himself. His companions took no notice of these combinations of eating
and learning: they knew from experience that it was his way to make up
at breakfast-time for the moments he had stolen from his studies the
night before.

It was not difficult to see that the third member of the party, a girl
of nineteen or twenty, was the boy's sister. Each had a wealth of brown
hair, inclining, in the girl's case to a shade that had tints of gold in
it; each had grey eyes, in which there was a mixture of blue; each had
a bright, vivid colour; each was undeniably good-looking and eminently
healthy. No one would have doubted that both had lived a good deal of
an open-air existence: the boy was already muscular and sinewy: the
girl looked as if she was well acquainted with the tennis racket and
the golf-stick. Nor would any one have made the mistake of thinking
that these two were blood relations of the man at the head of the
table--between them and him there was not the least resemblance of
feature, of colour, or of manner.

While the boy learnt the last lines of his Latin, and the doctor turned
over the newspaper, the girl read a letter--evidently, from the large
sprawling handwriting, the missive of some girlish correspondent. She
was deep in it when, from one of the turrets of the Cathedral, a bell
began to ring. At that, she glanced at her brother.

“There's Martin, Dick!” she said. “You'll have to hurry.”

Many a long year before that, in one of the bygone centuries, a worthy
citizen of Wrychester, Martin by name, had left a sum of money to the
Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral on condition that as long as ever the
Cathedral stood, they should cause to be rung a bell from its smaller
bell-tower for three minutes before nine o'clock every morning, all the
year round. What Martin's object had been no one now knew--but this bell
served to remind young gentlemen going to offices, and boys going to
school, that the hour of their servitude was near. And Dick Bewery,
without a word, bolted half his coffee, snatched up his book, grabbed
at a cap which lay with more books on a chair close by, and vanished
through the open window. The doctor laughed, laid aside his newspaper,
and handed his cup across the table.

“I don't think you need bother yourself about Dick's ever being late,
Mary,” he said. “You are not quite aware of the power of legs that are
only seventeen years old. Dick could get to any given point in just
about one-fourth of the time that I could, for instance--moreover, he
has a cunning knowledge of every short cut in the city.”

Mary Bewery took the empty cup and began to refill it.

“I don't like him to be late,” she remarked. “It's the beginning of bad
habits.”

“Oh, well!” said Ransford indulgently. “He's pretty free from anything
of that sort, you know. I haven't even suspected him of smoking, yet.”

“That's because he thinks smoking would stop his growth and interfere
with his cricket,” answered Mary. “He would smoke if it weren't for
that.”

“That's giving him high praise, then,” said Ransford. “You couldn't
give him higher! Know how to repress his inclinations. An excellent
thing--and most unusual, I fancy. Most people--don't!”

He took his refilled cup, rose from the table, and opened a box of
cigarettes which stood on the mantelpiece. And the girl, instead of
picking up her letter again, glanced at him a little doubtfully.

“That reminds me of--of something I wanted to say to you,” she said.
“You're quite right about people not repressing their inclinations. I--I
wish some people would!”

Ransford turned quickly from the hearth and gave her a sharp look,
beneath which her colour heightened. Her eyes shifted their gaze away to
her letter, and she picked it up and began to fold it nervously. And at
that Ransford rapped out a name, putting a quick suggestion of meaning
inquiry into his voice.

“Bryce?” he asked.

The girl nodded her face showing distinct annoyance and dislike. Before
saying more, Ransford lighted a cigarette.

“Been at it again?” he said at last. “Since last time?”

“Twice,” she answered. “I didn't like to tell you--I've hated to bother
you about it. But--what am I to do? I dislike him intensely--I can't
tell why, but it's there, and nothing could ever alter the feeling.
And though I told him--before--that it was useless--he mentioned it
again--yesterday--at Mrs. Folliot's garden-party.”

“Confound his impudence!” growled Ransford. “Oh, well!--I'll have to
settle with him myself. It's useless trifling with anything like that. I
gave him a quiet hint before. And since he won't take it--all right!”

“But--what shall you do?” she asked anxiously. “Not--send him away?”

“If he's any decency about him, he'll go--after what I say to him,”
 answered Ransford. “Don't you trouble yourself about it--I'm not at all
keen about him. He's a clever enough fellow, and a good assistant, but I
don't like him, personally--never did.”

“I don't want to think that anything that I say should lose him his
situation--or whatever you call it,” she remarked slowly. “That would
seem--”

“No need to bother,” interrupted Ransford. “He'll get another in two
minutes--so to speak. Anyway, we can't have this going on. The fellow
must be an ass! When I was young--”

He stopped short at that, and turning away, looked out across the garden
as if some recollection had suddenly struck him.

“When you were young--which is, of course, such an awfully long time
since!” said the girl, a little teasingly. “What?”

“Only that if a woman said No--unmistakably--once, a man took it as
final,” replied Ransford. “At least--so I was always given to believe.
Nowadays--”

“You forget that Mr. Pemberton Bryce is what most people would call a
very pushing young man,” said Mary. “If he doesn't get what he wants in
this world, it won't be for not asking for it. But--if you must speak
to him--and I really think you must!--will you tell him that he is
not going to get--me? Perhaps he'll take it finally from you--as my
guardian.”

“I don't know if parents and guardians count for much in these
degenerate days,” said Ransford. “But--I won't have him annoying you.
And--I suppose it has come to annoyance?”

“It's very annoying to be asked three times by a man whom you've told
flatly, once for all, that you don't want him, at any time, ever!” she
answered. “It's--irritating!”

“All right,” said Ransford quietly. “I'll speak to him. There's going to
be no annoyance for you under this roof.”

The girl gave him a quick glance, and Ransford turned away from her and
picked up his letters.

“Thank you,” she said. “But--there's no need to tell me that, because I
know it already. Now I wonder if you'll tell me something more?”

Ransford turned back with a sudden apprehension.

“Well?” he asked brusquely. “What?”

“When are you going to tell me all about--Dick and myself?” she asked.
“You promised that you would, you know, some day. And--a whole year's
gone by since then. And--Dick's seventeen! He won't be satisfied
always--just to know no more than that our father and mother died when
we were very little, and that you've been guardian--and all that you
have been!--to us. Will he, now?”

Ransford laid down his letters again, and thrusting his hands in his
pockets, squared his shoulders against the mantelpiece. “Don't you think
you might wait until you're twenty-one?” he asked.

“Why?” she said, with a laugh. “I'm just twenty--do you really think I
shall be any wiser in twelve months? Of course I shan't!”

“You don't know that,” he replied. “You may be--a great deal wiser.”

“But what has that got to do with it?” she persisted. “Is there any
reason why I shouldn't be told--everything?”

She was looking at him with a certain amount of demand--and Ransford,
who had always known that some moment of this sort must inevitably come,
felt that she was not going to be put off with ordinary excuses. He
hesitated--and she went on speaking.

“You know,” she continued, almost pleadingly. “We don't know
anything--at all. I never have known, and until lately Dick has been too
young to care--”

“Has he begun asking questions?” demanded Ransford hastily.

“Once or twice, lately--yes,” replied Mary. “It's only natural.” She
laughed a little--a forced laugh. “They say,” she went on, “that
it doesn't matter, nowadays, if you can't tell who your grandfather
was--but, just think, we don't know who our father was--except that his
name was John Bewery. That doesn't convey much.”

“You know more,” said Ransford. “I told you--always have told you--that
he was an early friend of mine, a man of business, who, with your
mother, died young, and I, as their friend, became guardian to you and
Dick. Is--is there anything much more that I could tell?”

“There's something I should very much like to know--personally,” she
answered, after a pause which lasted so long that Ransford began to feel
uncomfortable under it. “Don't be angry--or hurt--if I tell you plainly
what it is. I'm quite sure it's never even occurred to Dick--but I'm
three years ahead of him. It's this--have we been dependent on you?”

Ransford's face flushed and he turned deliberately to the window, and
for a moment stood staring out on his garden and the glimpses of the
Cathedral. And just as deliberately as he had turned away, he turned
back.

“No!” he said. “Since you ask me, I'll tell you that. You've both got
money--due to you when you're of age. It--it's in my hands. Not a
great lot--but sufficient to--to cover all your expenses.
Education--everything. When you're twenty-one, I'll hand over
yours--when Dick's twenty-one, his. Perhaps I ought to have told you
all that before, but--I didn't think it necessary. I--I dare say I've a
tendency to let things slide.”

“You've never let things slide about us,” she replied quickly, with
a sudden glance which made him turn away again. “And I only wanted to
know--because I'd got an idea that--well, that we were owing everything
to you.”

“Not from me!” he exclaimed.

“No--that would never be!” she said. “But--don't you understand?
I--wanted to know--something. Thank you. I won't ask more now.”

“I've always meant to tell you--a good deal,” remarked Ransford, after
another pause. “You see, I can scarcely--yet--realize that you're both
growing up! You were at school a year ago. And Dick is still very young.
Are--are you more satisfied now?” he went on anxiously. “If not--”

“I'm quite satisfied,” she answered. “Perhaps--some day--you'll tell me
more about our father and mother?--but never mind even that now. You're
sure you haven't minded my asking--what I have asked?”

“Of course not--of course not!” he said hastily. “I ought to have
remembered. And--but we'll talk again. I must get into the surgery--and
have a word with Bryce, too.”

“If you could only make him see reason and promise not to offend again,”
 she said. “Wouldn't that solve the difficulty?”

Ransford shook his head and made no answer. He picked up his letters
again and went out, and down a long stone-walled passage which led to
his surgery at the side of the house. He was alone there when he had
shut the door--and he relieved his feelings with a deep groan.

“Heaven help me if the lad ever insists on the real truth and on having
proofs and facts given to him!” he muttered. “I shouldn't mind telling
her, when she's a bit older--but he wouldn't understand as she would.
Anyway, thank God I can keep up the pleasant fiction about the money
without her ever knowing that I told her a deliberate lie just now.
But--what's in the future? Here's one man to be dismissed already, and
there'll be others, and one of them will be the favoured man. That man
will have to be told! And--so will she, then. And--my God! she doesn't
see, and mustn't see, that I'm madly in love with her myself! She's no
idea of it--and she shan't have; I must--must continue to be--only the
guardian!”

He laughed a little cynically as he laid his letters down on his
desk and proceeded to open them--in which occupation he was presently
interrupted by the opening of the side-door and the entrance of Mr.
Pemberton Bryce.


CHAPTER II. MAKING AN ENEMY


It was characteristic of Pemberton Bryce that he always walked into a
room as if its occupant were asleep and he was afraid of waking him.
He had a gentle step which was soft without being stealthy, and quiet
movements which brought him suddenly to anybody's side before his
presence was noticed. He was by Ransford's desk ere Ransford knew he was
in the surgery--and Ransford's sudden realization of his presence
roused a certain feeling of irritation in his mind, which he instantly
endeavoured to suppress--it was no use getting cross with a man of whom
you were about to rid yourself, he said to himself. And for the moment,
after replying to his assistant's greeting--a greeting as quiet as his
entrance--he went on reading his letters, and Bryce turned off to that
part of the surgery in which the drugs were kept, and busied himself
in making up some prescription. Ten minutes went by in silence; then
Ransford pushed his correspondence aside, laid a paper-weight on it, and
twisting his chair round, looked at the man to whom he was going to say
some unpleasant things. Within himself he was revolving a question--how
would Bryce take it?

He had never liked this assistant of his, although he had then had him
in employment for nearly two years. There was something about Pemberton
Bryce which he did not understand and could not fathom. He had come to
him with excellent testimonials and good recommendations; he was well up
to his work, successful with patients, thoroughly capable as a
general practitioner--there was no fault to be found with him on
any professional grounds. But to Ransford his personality was
objectionable--why, he was not quite sure. Outwardly, Bryce was rather
more than presentable--a tall, good-looking man of twenty-eight or
thirty, whom some people--women especially--would call handsome; he was
the sort of young man who knows the value of good clothes and a smart
appearance, and his professional manner was all that could be desired.
But Ransford could not help distinguishing between Bryce the doctor
and Bryce the man--and Bryce the man he did not like. Outside the
professional part of him, Bryce seemed to him to be undoubtedly deep,
sly, cunning--he conveyed the impression of being one of those men whose
ears are always on the stretch, who take everything in and give little
out. There was a curious air of watchfulness and of secrecy about him
in private matters which was as repellent--to Ransford's thinking--as
it was hard to explain. Anyway, in private affairs, he did not like his
assistant, and he liked him less than ever as he glanced at him on this
particular occasion.

“I want a word with you,” he said curtly. “I'd better say it now.”

Bryce, who was slowly pouring some liquid from one bottle into another,
looked quietly across the room and did not interrupt himself in his
work. Ransford knew that he must have recognized a certain significance
in the words just addressed to him--but he showed no outward sign of it,
and the liquid went on trickling from one bottle to the other with the
same uniform steadiness.

“Yes?” said Bryce inquiringly. “One moment.”

He finished his task calmly, put the corks in the bottles, labelled one,
restored the other to a shelf, and turned round. Not a man to be easily
startled--not easily turned from a purpose, this, thought Ransford as
he glanced at Bryce's eyes, which had a trick of fastening their gaze on
people with an odd, disconcerting persistency.

“I'm sorry to say what I must say,” he began. “But--you've brought it on
yourself. I gave you a hint some time ago that your attentions were not
welcome to Miss Bewery.”

Bryce made no immediate response. Instead, leaning almost carelessly and
indifferently against the table at which he had been busy with drugs
and bottles, he took a small file from his waistcoat pocket and began to
polish his carefully cut nails.

“Yes?” he said, after a pause. “Well?”

“In spite of it,” continued Ransford, “you've since addressed her again
on the matter--not merely once, but twice.”

Bryce put his file away, and thrusting his hands in his pockets,
crossed his feet as he leaned back against the table--his whole attitude
suggesting, whether meaningly or not, that he was very much at his ease.

“There's a great deal to be said on a point like this,” he observed. “If
a man wishes a certain young woman to become his wife, what right has
any other man--or the young woman herself, for that matter to say that
he mustn't express his desires to her?”

“None,” said Ransford, “provided he only does it once--and takes the
answer he gets as final.”

“I disagree with you entirely,” retorted Bryce. “On the last particular,
at any rate. A man who considers any word of a woman's as being final is
a fool. What a woman thinks on Monday she's almost dead certain not to
think on Tuesday. The whole history of human relationship is on my side
there. It's no opinion--it's a fact.”

Ransford stared at this frank remark, and Bryce went on, coolly and
imperturbably, as if he had been discussing a medical problem.

“A man who takes a woman's first answer as final,” he continued, “is, I
repeat, a fool. There are lots of reasons why a woman shouldn't know
her own mind at the first time of asking. She may be too surprised. She
mayn't be quite decided. She may say one thing when she really means
another. That often happens. She isn't much better equipped at the
second time of asking. And there are women--young ones--who aren't
really certain of themselves at the third time. All that's common
sense.”

“I'll tell you what it is!” suddenly exclaimed Ransford, after remaining
silent for a moment under this flow of philosophy. “I'm not going to
discuss theories and ideas. I know one young woman, at any rate, who
is certain of herself. Miss Bewery does not feel any inclination to
you--now, nor at any time to be! She's told you so three times. And--you
should take her answer and behave yourself accordingly!”

Bryce favoured his senior with a searching look.

“How does Miss Bewery know that she mayn't be inclined to--in the
future?” he asked. “She may come to regard me with favour.”

“No, she won't!” declared Ransford. “Better hear the truth, and be done
with it. She doesn't like you--and she doesn't want to, either. Why
can't you take your answer like a man?”

“What's your conception of a man?” asked Bryce.

“That!--and a good one,” exclaimed Ransford.

“May satisfy you--but not me,” said Bryce. “Mine's different. My
conception of a man is of a being who's got some perseverance. You can
get anything in this world--anything!--by pegging away for it.”

“You're not going to get my ward,” suddenly said Ransford. “That's flat!
She doesn't want you--and she's now said so three times. And--I support
her.”

“What have you against me?” asked Bryce calmly. “If, as you say, you
support her in her resolution not to listen to my proposals, you must
have something against me. What is it?”

“That's a question you've no right to put,” replied Ransford, “for it's
utterly unnecessary. So I'm not going to answer it. I've nothing against
you as regards your work--nothing! I'm willing to give you an excellent
testimonial.”

“Oh!” remarked Bryce quietly. “That means--you wish me to go away?”

“I certainly think it would be best,” said Ransford.

“In that case,” continued Bryce, more coolly than ever, “I shall
certainly want to know what you have against me--or what Miss Bewery has
against me. Why am I objected to as a suitor? You, at any rate, know
who I am--you know that my father is of our own profession, and a man
of reputation and standing, and that I myself came to you on high
recommendation. Looked at from my standpoint, I'm a thoroughly eligible
young man. And there's a point you forget--there's no mystery about me!”

Ransford turned sharply in his chair as he noticed the emphasis which
Bryce put on his last word.

“What do you mean?” he demanded.

“What I've just said,” replied Bryce. “There's no mystery attaching to
me. Any question about me can be answered. Now, you can't say that as
regards your ward. That's a fact, Dr. Ransford.”

Ransford, in years gone by, had practised himself in the art of
restraining his temper--naturally a somewhat quick one. And he made
a strong effort in that direction now, recognizing that there was
something behind his assistant's last remark, and that Bryce meant him
to know it was there.

“I'll repeat what I've just said,” he answered. “What do you mean by
that?”

“I hear things,” said Bryce. “People will talk--even a doctor can't
refuse to hear what gossiping and garrulous patients say. Since she
came to you from school, a year ago, Wrychester people have been much
interested in Miss Bewery, and in her brother, too. And there are a good
many residents of the Close--you know their nice, inquisitive ways!--who
want to know who the sister and brother really are--and what your
relationship is to them!”

“Confound their impudence!” growled Ransford.

“By all means,” agreed Bryce. “And--for all I care--let them be
confounded, too. But if you imagine that the choice and select coteries
of a cathedral town, consisting mainly of the relicts of deceased
deans, canons, prebendaries and the like, and of maiden aunts, elderly
spinsters, and tea-table-haunting curates, are free from gossip--why,
you're a singularly innocent person!”

“They'd better not begin gossiping about my affairs,” said Ransford.
“Otherwise--”

“You can't stop them from gossiping about your affairs,” interrupted
Bryce cheerfully. “Of course they gossip about your affairs; have
gossiped about them; will continue to gossip about them. It's human
nature!”

“You've heard them?” asked Ransford, who was too vexed to keep back his
curiosity. “You yourself?”

“As you are aware, I am often asked out to tea,” replied Bryce, “and
to garden-parties, and tennis-parties, and choice and cosy functions
patronized by curates and associated with crumpets. I have heard--with
these ears. I can even repeat the sort of thing I have heard.
'That dear, delightful Miss Bewery--what a charming girl! And that
good-looking boy, her brother--quite a dear! Now I wonder who they
really are? Wards of Dr. Ransford, of course! Really, how very
romantic!--and just a little--eh?--unusual? Such a comparatively young
man to have such a really charming girl as his ward! Can't be more than
forty-five himself, and she's twenty--how very, very romantic! Really,
one would think there ought to be a chaperon!'”

“Damn!” said Ransford under his breath.

“Just so,” agreed Bryce. “But--that's the sort of thing. Do you want
more? I can supply an unlimited quantity in the piece if you like. But
it's all according to sample.”

“So--in addition to your other qualities,” remarked Ransford, “you're a
gossiper?”

Bryce smiled slowly and shook his head.

“No,” he replied. “I'm a listener. A good one, too. But do you see my
point? I say--there's no mystery about me. If Miss Bewery will honour
me with her hand, she'll get a man whose antecedents will bear the
strictest investigation.”

“Are you inferring that hers won't?” demanded Ransford.

“I'm not inferring anything,” said Bryce. “I am speaking for myself, of
myself. Pressing my own claim, if you like, on you, the guardian. You
might do much worse than support my claims, Dr. Ransford.”

“Claims, man!” retorted Ransford. “You've got no claims! What are you
talking about? Claims!”

“My pretensions, then,” answered Bryce. “If there is a mystery--as
Wrychester people say there is--about Miss Bewery, it would be safe with
me. Whatever you may think, I'm a thoroughly dependable man--when it's
in my own interest.”

“And--when it isn't?” asked Ransford. “What are you then?--as you're so
candid.”

“I could be a very bad enemy,” replied Bryce.

There was a moment's silence, during which the two men looked
attentively at each other.

“I've told you the truth,” said Ransford at last. “Miss Bewery flatly
refuses to entertain any idea whatever of ever marrying you. She
earnestly hopes that that eventuality may never be mentioned to her
again. Will you give me your word of honour to respect her wishes?”

“No!” answered Bryce. “I won't!”

“Why not?” asked Ransford, with a faint show of anger. “A woman's
wishes!”

“Because I may consider that I see signs of a changed mind in her,” said
Bryce. “That's why.”

“You'll never see any change of mind,” declared Ransford. “That's
certain. Is that your fixed determination?”

“It is,” answered Bryce. “I'm not the sort of man who is easily
repelled.”

“Then, in that case,” said Ransford, “we had better part company.” He
rose from his desk, and going over to a safe which stood in a corner,
unlocked it and took some papers from an inside drawer. He consulted
one of these and turned to Bryce. “You remember our agreement?” he
continued. “Your engagement was to be determined by a three months'
notice on either side, or, at my will, at any time by payment of three
months' salary?”

“Quite right,” agreed Bryce. “I remember, of course.”

“Then I'll give you a cheque for three months' salary--now,” said
Ransford, and sat down again at his desk. “That will settle matters
definitely--and, I hope, agreeably.”

Bryce made no reply. He remained leaning against the table, watching
Ransford write the cheque. And when Ransford laid the cheque down at the
edge of the desk he made no movement towards it.

“You must see,” remarked Ransford, half apologetically, “that it's the
only thing I can do. I can't have any man who's not--not welcome to
her, to put it plainly--causing any annoyance to my ward. I repeat,
Bryce--you must see it!”

“I have nothing to do with what you see,” answered Bryce. “Your opinions
are not mine, and mine aren't yours. You're really turning me away--as
if I were a dishonest foreman!--because in my opinion it would be a very
excellent thing for her and for myself if Miss Bewery would consent to
marry me. That's the plain truth.”

Ransford allowed himself to take a long and steady look at Bryce. The
thing was done now, and his dismissed assistant seemed to be taking it
quietly--and Ransford's curiosity was aroused.

“I can't make you out!” he exclaimed. “I don't know whether you're the
most cynical young man I ever met, or whether you're the most obtuse--”

“Not the last, anyway,” interrupted Bryce. “I assure you of that!”

“Can't you see for yourself, then, man, that the girl doesn't want you!”
 said Ransford. “Hang it!--for anything you know to the contrary, she may
have--might have--other ideas!”

Bryce, who had been staring out of a side window for the last minute or
two, suddenly laughed, and, lifting a hand, pointed into the garden. And
Ransford turned--and saw Mary Bewery walking there with a tall lad, whom
he recognized as one Sackville Bonham, stepson of Mr. Folliot, a wealthy
resident of the Close. The two young people were laughing and chatting
together with evident great friendliness.

“Perhaps,” remarked Bryce quietly, “her ideas run in--that direction? In
which case, Dr. Ransford, you'll have trouble. For Mrs. Folliot, mother
of yonder callow youth, who's the apple of her eye, is one of the
inquisitive ladies of whom I've just told you, and if her son unites
himself with anybody, she'll want to know exactly who that anybody is.
You'd far better have supported me as an aspirant! However--I suppose
there's no more to say.”

“Nothing!” answered Ransford. “Except to say good-day--and good-bye to
you. You needn't remain--I'll see to everything. And I'm going out now.
I think you'd better not exchange any farewells with any one.”

Bryce nodded silently, and Ransford, picking up his hat and gloves, left
the surgery by the side door. A moment later, Bryce saw him crossing the
Close.


CHAPTER III. ST. WRYTHA'S STAIR


The summarily dismissed assistant, thus left alone, stood for a moment
in evident deep thought before he moved towards Ransford's desk and
picked up the cheque. He looked at it carefully, folded it neatly, and
put it away in his pocket-book; after that he proceeded to collect a
few possessions of his own, instruments, books from various drawers and
shelves. He was placing these things in a small hand-bag when a gentle
tap sounded on the door by which patients approached the surgery.

“Come in!” he called.

There was no response, although the door was slightly ajar; instead,
the knock was repeated, and at that Bryce crossed the room and flung the
door open.

A man stood outside--an elderly, slight-figured, quiet-looking man, who
looked at Bryce with a half-deprecating, half-nervous air; the air of a
man who was shy in manner and evidently fearful of seeming to intrude.
Bryce's quick, observant eyes took him in at a glance, noting a much
worn and lined face, thin grey hair and tired eyes; this was a man, he
said to himself, who had seen trouble. Nevertheless, not a poor man,
if his general appearance was anything to go by--he was well and even
expensively dressed, in the style generally affected by well-to-do
merchants and city men; his clothes were fashionably cut, his silk hat
was new, his linen and boots irreproachable; a fine diamond pin gleamed
in his carefully arranged cravat. Why, then, this unmistakably furtive
and half-frightened manner--which seemed to be somewhat relieved at the
sight of Bryce?

“Is this--is Dr. Ransford within?” asked the stranger. “I was told this
is his house.”

“Dr. Ransford is out,” replied Bryce. “Just gone out--not five minutes
ago. This is his surgery. Can I be of use?”

The man hesitated, looking beyond Bryce into the room.

“No, thank you,” he said at last. “I--no, I don't want professional
services--I just called to see Dr. Ransford--I--the fact is, I once knew
some one of that name. It's no matter--at present.”

Bryce stepped outside and pointed across the Close.

“Dr. Ransford,” he said, “went over there--I rather fancy he's gone to
the Deanery--he has a case there. If you went through Paradise, you'd
very likely meet him coming back--the Deanery is the big house in the
far corner yonder.”

The stranger followed Bryce's outstretched finger.

“Paradise?” he said, wonderingly. “What's that?”

Bryce pointed to a long stretch of grey wall which projected from the
south wall of the Cathedral into the Close.

“It's an enclosure--between the south porch and the transept,” he said.
“Full of old tombs and trees--a sort of wilderness--why called Paradise
I don't know. There's a short cut across it to the Deanery and that part
of the Close--through that archway you see over there. If you go across,
you're almost sure to meet Dr. Ransford.”

“I'm much obliged to you,” said the stranger. “Thank you.”

He turned away in the direction which Bryce had indicated, and Bryce
went back--only to go out again and call after him.

“If you don't meet him, shall I say you'll call again?” he asked.
“And--what name?”

The stranger shook his head.

“It's immaterial,” he answered. “I'll see him--somewhere--or later. Many
thanks.”

He went on his way towards Paradise, and Bryce returned to the surgery
and completed his preparations for departure. And in the course of
things, he more than once looked through the window into the garden and
saw Mary Bewery still walking and talking with young Sackville Bonham.

“No,” he muttered to himself. “I won't trouble to exchange any
farewells--not because of Ransford's hint, but because there's no need.
If Ransford thinks he's going to drive me out of Wrychester before I
choose to go he's badly mistaken--it'll be time enough to say farewell
when I take my departure--and that won't be just yet. Now I wonder
who that old chap was? Knew some one of Ransford's name once, did he?
Probably Ransford himself--in which case he knows more of Ransford than
anybody in Wrychester knows--for nobody in Wrychester knows anything
beyond a few years back. No, Dr. Ransford!--no farewells--to anybody! A
mere departure--till I turn up again.”

But Bryce was not to get away from the old house without something in
the nature of a farewell. As he walked out of the surgery by the side
entrance, Mary Bewery, who had just parted from young Bonham in the
garden and was about to visit her dogs in the stable yard, came along:
she and Bryce met, face to face. The girl flushed, not so much from
embarrassment as from vexation; Bryce, cool as ever, showed no sign of
any embarrassment. Instead, he laughed, tapping the hand-bag which he
carried under one arm.

“Summarily turned out--as if I had been stealing the spoons,” he
remarked. “I go--with my small belongings. This is my first reward--for
devotion.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” answered Mary, sweeping by him with a
highly displeased glance. “Except that you have brought it on yourself.”

“A very feminine retort!” observed Bryce. “But--there is no malice in
it? Your anger won't last more than--shall we say a day?”

“You may say what you like,” she replied. “As I just said, I have
nothing to say--now or at any time.”

“That remains to be proved,” remarked Bryce. “The phrase is one of much
elasticity. But for the present--I go!”

He walked out into the Close, and without as much as a backward look
struck off across the sward in the direction in which, ten minutes
before, he had sent the strange man. He had rooms in a quiet lane on the
farther side of the Cathedral precinct, and his present intention was to
go to them to leave his bag and make some further arrangements. He had
no idea of leaving Wrychester--he knew of another doctor in the city who
was badly in need of help: he would go to him--would tell him, if need
be, why he had left Ransford. He had a multiplicity of schemes and ideas
in his head, and he began to consider some of them as he stepped out of
the Close into the ancient enclosure which all Wrychester folk knew by
its time-honoured name of Paradise. This was really an outer court of
the old cloisters; its high walls, half-ruinous, almost wholly covered
with ivy, shut in an expanse of turf, liberally furnished with yew and
cypress and studded with tombs and gravestones. In one corner rose a
gigantic elm; in another a broken stairway of stone led to a doorway set
high in the walls of the nave; across the enclosure itself was a pathway
which led towards the houses in the south-east corner of the Close. It
was a curious, gloomy spot, little frequented save by people who went
across it rather than follow the gravelled paths outside, and it was
untenanted when Bryce stepped into it. But just as he walked through the
archway he saw Ransford. Ransford was emerging hastily from a postern
door in the west porch--so hastily that Bryce checked himself to look at
him. And though they were twenty yards apart, Bryce saw that Ransford's
face was very pale, almost to whiteness, and that he was unmistakably
agitated. Instantly he connected that agitation with the man who had
come to the surgery door.

“They've met!” mused Bryce, and stopped, staring after Ransford's
retreating figure. “Now what is it in that man's mere presence that's
upset Ransford? He looks like a man who's had a nasty, unexpected
shock--a bad 'un!”

He remained standing in the archway, gazing after the retreating figure,
until Ransford had disappeared within his own garden; still wondering
and speculating, but not about his own affairs, he turned across
Paradise at last and made his way towards the farther corner. There was
a little wicket-gate there, set in the ivied wall; as Bryce opened it,
a man in the working dress of a stone-mason, whom he recognized as being
one of the master-mason's staff, came running out of the bushes.
His face, too, was white, and his eyes were big with excitement. And
recognizing Bryce, he halted, panting.

“What is it, Varner?” asked Bryce calmly. “Something happened?”

The man swept his hand across his forehead as if he were dazed, and then
jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

“A man!” he gasped. “Foot of St. Wrytha's Stair there, doctor. Dead--or
if not dead, near it. I saw it!”

Bryce seized Varner's arm and gave it a shake.

“You saw--what?” he demanded.

“Saw him--fall. Or rather--flung!” panted Varner. “Somebody--couldn't
see who, nohow--flung him right through yon doorway, up there. He fell
right over the steps--crash!” Bryce looked over the tops of the yews and
cypresses at the doorway in the clerestory to which Varner pointed--a
low, open archway gained by the half-ruinous stair. It was forty feet at
least from the ground.

“You saw him--thrown!” he exclaimed. “Thrown--down there? Impossible,
man!”

“Tell you I saw it!” asserted Varner doggedly. “I was looking at one
of those old tombs yonder--somebody wants some repairs doing--and the
jackdaws were making such a to-do up there by the roof I glanced up at
them. And I saw this man thrown through that door--fairly flung through
it! God!--do you think I could mistake my own eyes?”

“Did you see who flung him?” asked Bryce.

“No; I saw a hand--just for one second, as it might be--by the edge of
the doorway,” answered Varner. “I was more for watching him! He sort
of tottered for a second on the step outside the door, turned over and
screamed--I can hear it now!--and crashed down on the flags beneath.”

“How long since?” demanded Bryce.

“Five or six minutes,” said Varner. “I rushed to him--I've been doing
what I could. But I saw it was no good, so I was running for help--”

Bryce pushed him towards the bushes by which they were standing.

“Take me to him,” he said. “Come on!”

Varner turned back, making a way through the cypresses. He led Bryce to
the foot of the great wall of the nave. There in the corner formed by
the angle of nave and transept, on a broad pavement of flagstones, lay
the body of a man crumpled up in a curiously twisted position. And with
one glance, even before he reached it, Bryce knew what body it was--that
of the man who had come, shyly and furtively, to Ransford's door.

“Look!” exclaimed Varner, suddenly pointing. “He's stirring!”

Bryce, whose gaze was fastened on the twisted figure, saw a slight
movement which relaxed as suddenly as it had occurred. Then came
stillness. “That's the end!” he muttered. “The man's dead! I'll
guarantee that before I put a hand on him. Dead enough!” he went on, as
he reached the body and dropped on one knee by it. “His neck's broken.”

The mason bent down and looked, half-curiously, half-fearfully, at the
dead man. Then he glanced upward--at the open door high above them in
the walls.

“It's a fearful drop, that, sir,” he said. “And he came down with such
violence. You're sure it's over with him?”

“He died just as we came up,” answered Bryce. “That movement we saw was
the last effort--involuntary, of course. Look here, Varner!--you'll have
to get help. You'd better fetch some of the cathedral people--some of
the vergers. No!” he broke off suddenly, as the low strains of an organ
came from within the great building. “They're just beginning the morning
service--of course, it's ten o'clock. Never mind them--go straight to
the police. Bring them back--I'll stay here.”

The mason turned off towards the gateway of the Close, and while
the strains of the organ grew louder, Bryce bent over the dead man,
wondering what had really happened. Thrown from an open doorway in the
clerestory over St. Wrytha's Stair?--it seemed almost impossible! But a
sudden thought struck him: supposing two men, wishing to talk in privacy
unobserved, had gone up into the clerestory of the Cathedral--as
they easily could, by more than one door, by more than one stair--and
supposing they had quarrelled, and one of them had flung or pushed
the other through the door above--what then? And on the heels of that
thought hurried another--this man, now lying dead, had come to the
surgery, seeking Ransford, and had subsequently gone away, presumably
in search of him, and Bryce himself had just seen Ransford, obviously
agitated and pale of cheek, leaving the west porch; what did it all
mean? what was the apparently obvious inference to be drawn? Here was
the stranger dead--and Varner was ready to swear that he had seen
him thrown, flung violently, through the door forty feet above. That
was--murder! Then--who was the murderer?

Bryce looked carefully and narrowly around him. Now that Varner had gone
away, there was not a human being in sight, nor anywhere near, so far as
he knew. On one side of him and the dead man rose the grey walls of nave
and transept; on the other, the cypresses and yews rising amongst the
old tombs and monuments. Assuring himself that no one was near, no eye
watching, he slipped his hand into the inner breast pocket of the dead
man's smart morning coat. Such a man must carry papers--papers would
reveal something. And Bryce wanted to know anything--anything that would
give information and let him into whatever secret there might be between
this unlucky stranger and Ransford.

But the breast pocket was empty; there was no pocket-book there; there
were no papers there. Nor were there any papers elsewhere in the other
pockets which he hastily searched: there was not even a card with a name
on it. But he found a purse, full of money--banknotes, gold, silver--and
in one of its compartments a scrap of paper folded curiously, after the
fashion of the cocked-hat missives of another age in which envelopes had
not been invented. Bryce hurriedly unfolded this, and after one glance
at its contents, made haste to secrete it in his own pocket. He had only
just done this and put back the purse when he heard Varner's voice, and
a second later the voice of Inspector Mitchington, a well-known police
official. And at that Bryce sprang to his feet, and when the mason and
his companions emerged from the bushes was standing looking thoughtfully
at the dead man. He turned to Mitchington with a shake of the head.

“Dead!” he said in a hushed voice. “Died as we got to him. Broken--all
to pieces, I should say--neck and spine certainly. I suppose Varner's
told you what he saw.”

Mitchington, a sharp-eyed, dark-complexioned man, quick of movement,
nodded, and after one glance at the body, looked up at the open doorway
high above them.

“That the door?” he asked, turning to Varner. “And--it was open?”

“It's always open,” answered Varner. “Least-ways, it's been open, like
that, all this spring, to my knowledge.”

“What is there behind it?” inquired Mitchington.

“Sort of gallery, that runs all round the nave,” replied Varner.
“Clerestory gallery--that's what it is. People can go up there and walk
around--lots of 'em do--tourists, you know. There's two or three ways up
to it--staircases in the turrets.”

Mitchington turned to one of the two constables who had followed him.

“Let Varner show you the way up there,” he said. “Go quietly--don't
make any fuss--the morning service is just beginning. Say nothing to
anybody--just take a quiet look around, along that gallery, especially
near the door there--and come back here.” He looked down at the dead man
again as the mason and the constable went away. “A stranger, I should
think, doctor--tourist, most likely. But--thrown down! That man Varner
is positive. That looks like foul play.”

“Oh, there's no doubt of that!” asserted Bryce. “You'll have to go
into that pretty deeply. But the inside of the Cathedral's like a
rabbit-warren, and whoever threw the man through that doorway no doubt
knew how to slip away unobserved. Now, you'll have to remove the body to
the mortuary, of course--but just let me fetch Dr. Ransford first.
I'd like some other medical man than myself to see him before he's
moved--I'll have him here in five minutes.”

He turned away through the bushes and emerging upon the Close ran across
the lawns in the direction of the house which he had left not twenty
minutes before. He had but one idea as he ran--he wanted to see Ransford
face to face with the dead man--wanted to watch him, to observe him,
to see how he looked, how he behaved. Then he, Bryce, would
know--something.

But he was to know something before that. He opened the door of the
surgery suddenly, but with his usual quietness of touch. And on the
threshold he paused. Ransford, the very picture of despair, stood just
within, his face convulsed, beating one hand upon the other.


CHAPTER IV. THE ROOM AT THE MITRE


In the few seconds which elapsed before Ransford recognized Bryce's
presence, Bryce took a careful, if swift, observation of his late
employer. That Ransford was visibly upset by something was plain enough
to see; his face was still pale, he was muttering to himself, one
clenched fist was pounding the open palm of the other hand--altogether,
he looked like a man who is suddenly confronted with some fearful
difficulty. And when Bryce, having looked long enough to satisfy his
wishes, coughed gently, he started in such a fashion as to suggest that
his nerves had become unstrung.

“What is it?--what are you doing there?” he demanded almost fiercely.
“What do you mean by coming in like that?”

Bryce affected to have seen nothing.

“I came to fetch you,” he answered. “There's been an accident in
Paradise--man fallen from that door at the head of St. Wrytha's Stair. I
wish you'd come--but I may as well tell you that he's past help--dead!”

“Dead! A man?” exclaimed Ransford. “What man? A workman?”

Bryce had already made up his mind about telling Ransford of the
stranger's call at the surgery. He would say nothing--at that time at
any rate. It was improbable that any one but himself knew of the call;
the side entrance to the surgery was screened from the Close by a
shrubbery; it was very unlikely that any passer-by had seen the man call
or go away. No--he would keep his knowledge secret until it could be
made better use of.

“Not a workman--not a townsman--a stranger,” he answered. “Looks like a
well-to-do tourist. A slightly-built, elderly man--grey-haired.”

Ransford, who had turned to his desk to master himself, looked round
with a sudden sharp glance--and for the moment Bryce was taken aback.
For he had condemned Ransford--and yet that glance was one of apparently
genuine surprise, a glance which almost convinced him, against his
will, against only too evident facts, that Ransford was hearing of the
Paradise affair for the first time.

“An elderly man--grey-haired--slightly built?” said Ransford. “Dark
clothes--silk hat?”

“Precisely,” replied Bryce, who was now considerably astonished. “Do you
know him?”

“I saw such a man entering the Cathedral, a while ago,” answered
Ransford. “A stranger, certainly. Come along, then.”

He had fully recovered his self-possession by that time, and he led
the way from the surgery and across the Close as if he were going on
an ordinary professional visit. He kept silence as they walked rapidly
towards Paradise, and Bryce was silent, too. He had studied Ransford
a good deal during their two years' acquaintanceship, and he knew
Ransford's power of repressing and commanding his feelings and
concealing his thoughts. And now he decided that the look and start
which he had at first taken to be of the nature of genuine astonishment
were cunningly assumed, and he was not surprised when, having reached
the group of men gathered around the body, Ransford showed nothing but
professional interest.

“Have you done anything towards finding out who this unfortunate
man is?” asked Ransford, after a brief examination, as he turned to
Mitchington. “Evidently a stranger--but he probably has papers on him.”

“There's nothing on him--except a purse, with plenty of money in it,”
 answered Mitchington. “I've been through his pockets myself: there isn't
a scrap of paper--not even as much as an old letter. But he's evidently
a tourist, or something of the sort, and so he'll probably have stayed
in the city all night, and I'm going to inquire at the hotels.”

“There'll be an inquest, of course,” remarked Ransford mechanically.
“Well--we can do nothing, Mitchington. You'd better have the body
removed to the mortuary.” He turned and looked up the broken stairway
at the foot of which they were standing. “You say he fell down that?” he
asked. “Whatever was he doing up there?”

Mitchington looked at Bryce.

“Haven't you told Dr. Ransford how it was?” he asked.

“No,” answered Bryce. He glanced at Ransford, indicating Varner, who had
come back with the constable and was standing by. “He didn't fall,” he
went on, watching Ransford narrowly. “He was violently flung out of that
doorway. Varner here saw it.”

Ransford's cheek flushed, and he was unable to repress a slight start.
He looked at the mason.

“You actually saw it!” he exclaimed. “Why, what did you see?”

“Him!” answered Varner, nodding at the dead man. “Flung, head and heels,
clean through that doorway up there. Hadn't a chance to save himself, he
hadn't! Just grabbed at--nothing!--and came down. Give a year's wages if
I hadn't seen it--and heard him scream.”

Ransford was watching Varner with a set, concentrated look.

“Who--flung him?” he asked suddenly. “You say you saw!”

“Aye, sir, but not as much as all that!” replied the mason. “I just saw
a hand--and that was all. But,” he added, turning to the police with a
knowing look, “there's one thing I can swear to--it was a gentleman's
hand! I saw the white shirt cuff and a bit of a black sleeve!”

Ransford turned away. But he just as suddenly turned back to the
inspector.

“You'll have to let the Cathedral authorities know, Mitchington,” he
said. “Better get the body removed, though, first--do it now before the
morning service is over. And--let me hear what you find out about his
identity, if you can discover anything in the city.”

He went away then, without another word or a further glance at the dead
man. But Bryce had already assured himself of what he was certain was
a fact--that a look of unmistakable relief had swept across Ransford's
face for the fraction of a second when he knew that there were no papers
on the dead man. He himself waited after Ransford had gone; waited until
the police had fetched a stretcher, when he personally superintended
the removal of the body to the mortuary outside the Close. And there a
constable who had come over from the police-station gave a faint hint as
to further investigation.

“I saw that poor gentleman last night, sir,” he said to the inspector.
“He was standing at the door of the Mitre, talking to another
gentleman--a tallish man.”

“Then I'll go across there,” said Mitchington. “Come with me, if you
like, Dr. Bryce.”

This was precisely what Bryce desired--he was already anxious to acquire
all the information he could get. And he walked over the way with the
inspector, to the quaint old-world inn which filled almost one side
of the little square known as Monday Market, and in at the courtyard,
where, looking out of the bow window which had served as an outer bar
in the coaching days, they found the landlady of the Mitre, Mrs.
Partingley. Bryce saw at once that she had heard the news.

“What's this, Mr. Mitchington?” she demanded as they drew near across
the cobble-paved yard. “Somebody's been in to say there's been an
accident to a gentleman, a stranger--I hope it isn't one of the two
we've got in the house?”

“I should say it is, ma'am,” answered the inspector. “He was seen
outside here last night by one of our men, anyway.”

The landlady uttered an expression of distress, and opening a side-door,
motioned them to step into her parlour.

“Which of them is it?” she asked anxiously. “There's two--came together
last night, they did--a tall one and a short one. Dear, dear me!--is it
a bad accident, now, inspector?”

“The man's dead, ma'am,” replied Mitchington grimly. “And we want to
know who he is. Have you got his name--and the other gentleman's?”

Mrs. Partingley uttered another exclamation of distress and
astonishment, lifting her plump hands in horror. But her business
faculties remained alive, and she made haste to produce a big visitors'
book and to spread it open before her callers.

“There it is!” she said, pointing to the two last entries. “That's the
short gentleman's name--Mr. John Braden, London. And that's the
tall one's--Mr. Christopher Dellingham--also London. Tourists, of
course--we've never seen either of them before.”

“Came together, you say, Mrs. Partingley?” asked Mitchington. “When was
that, now?”

“Just before dinner, last night,” answered the landlady. “They'd
evidently come in by the London train--that gets in at six-forty, as you
know. They came here together, and they'd dinner together, and spent the
evening together. Of course, we took them for friends. But they didn't
go out together this morning, though they'd breakfast together. After
breakfast, Mr. Dellingham asked me the way to the old Manor Mill, and
he went off there, so I concluded. Mr. Braden, he hung about a bit,
studying a local directory I'd lent him, and after a while he asked me
if he could hire a trap to take him out to Saxonsteade this afternoon.
Of course, I said he could, and he arranged for it to be ready at
two-thirty. Then he went out, and across the market towards the
Cathedral. And that,” concluded Mrs. Partingley, “is about all I know,
gentlemen.”

“Saxonsteade, eh?” remarked Mitchington. “Did he say anything about his
reasons for going there?”

“Well, yes, he did,” replied the landlady. “For he asked me if I thought
he'd be likely to find the Duke at home at that time of day. I said I
knew his Grace was at Saxonsteade just now, and that I should think the
middle of the afternoon would be a good time.”

“He didn't tell you his business with the Duke?” asked Mitchington.

“Not a word!” said the landlady. “Oh, no!--just that, and no more.
But--here's Mr. Dellingham.”

Bryce turned to see a tall, broad-shouldered, bearded man pass the
window--the door opened and he walked in, to glance inquisitively at the
inspector. He turned at once to Mrs. Partingley.

“I hear there's been an accident to that gentleman I came in with last
night?” he said. “Is it anything serious? Your ostler says--”

“These gentlemen have just come about it, sir,” answered the landlady.
She glanced at Mitchington. “Perhaps you'll tell--” she began.

“Was he a friend of yours, sir?” asked Mitchington. “A personal friend?”

“Never saw him in my life before last night!” replied the tall man. “We
just chanced to meet in the train coming down from London, got talking,
and discovered we were both coming to the same place--Wrychester.
So--we came to this house together. No--no friend of mine--not even an
acquaintance--previous, of course, to last night. Is--is it anything
serious?”

“He's dead, sir,” replied Mitchington. “And now we want to know who he
is.”

“God bless my soul! Dead? You don't say so!” exclaimed Mr. Dellingham.
“Dear, dear! Well, I can't help you--don't know him from Adam. Pleasant,
well-informed man--seemed to have travelled a great deal in foreign
countries. I can tell you this much, though,” he went on, as if a sudden
recollection had come to him; “I gathered that he'd only just arrived in
England--in fact, now I come to think of it, he said as much. Made some
remark in the train about the pleasantness of the English landscape,
don't you know?--I got an idea that he'd recently come from some country
where trees and hedges and green fields aren't much in evidence. But--if
you want to know who he is, officer, why don't you search him? He's sure
to have papers, cards, and so on about him.”

“We have searched him,” answered Mitchington. “There isn't a paper, a
letter, or even a visiting card on him.”

Mr. Dellingham looked at the landlady.

“Bless me!” he said. “Remarkable! But he'd a suit-case, or something of
the sort--something light--which he carried up from the railway station
himself. Perhaps in that--”

“I should like to see whatever he had,” said Mitchington. “We'd better
examine his room, Mrs. Partingley.”

Bryce presently followed the landlady and the inspector upstairs--Mr.
Dellingham followed him. All four went into a bedroom which looked
out on Monday Market. And there, on a side-table, lay a small leather
suit-case, one which could easily be carried, with its upper half thrown
open and back against the wall behind.

The landlady, Mr. Dellingham and Bryce stood silently by while the
inspector examined the contents of this the only piece of luggage in
the room. There was very little to see--what toilet articles the visitor
brought were spread out on the dressing-table--brushes, combs, a case
of razors, and the like. And Mitchington nodded side-wise at them as he
began to take the articles out of the suit-case.

“There's one thing strikes me at once,” he said. “I dare say you
gentlemen notice it. All these things are new! This suit-case hasn't
been in use very long--see, the leather's almost unworn--and those
things on the dressing-table are new. And what there is here
looks new, too. There's not much, you see--he evidently had
no intention of a long stop. An extra pair of trousers--some
shirts--socks--collars--neckties--slippers--handkerchiefs--that's about
all. And the first thing to do is to see if the linen's marked with name
or initials.”

He deftly examined the various articles as he took them out, and in the
end shook his head.

“No name--no initials,” he said. “But look here--do you see, gentlemen,
where these collars were bought? Half a dozen of them, in a box. Paris!
There you are--the seller's name, inside the collar, just as in England.
Aristide Pujol, 82, Rue des Capucines. And--judging by the look
of 'em--I should say these shirts were bought there, too--and the
handkerchiefs--and the neckwear--they all have a foreign look. There may
be a clue in that--we might trace him in France if we can't in England.
Perhaps he is a Frenchman.”

“I'll take my oath he isn't!” exclaimed Mr. Dellingham. “However long
he'd been out of England he hadn't lost a North-Country accent! He was
some sort of a North-Countryman--Yorkshire or Lancashire, I'll go bail.
No Frenchman, officer--not he!”

“Well, there's no papers here, anyway,” said Mitchington, who had now
emptied the suit-case. “Nothing to show who he was. Nothing here, you
see, in the way of paper but this old book--what is it--History of
Barthorpe.”

“He showed me that in the train,” remarked Mr. Dellingham. “I'm
interested in antiquities and archaeology, and anybody who's long in my
society finds it out. We got talking of such things, and he pulled out
that book, and told me with great pride, that he'd picked it up from
a book-barrow in the street, somewhere in London, for one-and-six. I
think,” he added musingly, “that what attracted him in it was the
old calf binding and the steel frontispiece--I'm sure he'd no great
knowledge of antiquities.”

Mitchington laid the book down, and Bryce picked it up, examined the
title-page, and made a mental note of the fact that Barthorpe was a
market-town in the Midlands. And it was on the tip of his tongue to
say that if the dead man had no particular interest in antiquities and
archaeology, it was somewhat strange that he should have bought a book
which was mainly antiquarian, and that it might be that he had so
bought it because of a connection between Barthorpe and himself. But he
remembered that it was his own policy to keep pertinent facts for his
own private consideration, so he said nothing. And Mitchington presently
remarking that there was no more to be done there, and ascertaining from
Mr. Dellingham that it was his intention to remain in Wrychester for
at any rate a few days, they went downstairs again, and Bryce and the
inspector crossed over to the police-station.

The news had spread through the heart of the city, and at the
police-station doors a crowd had gathered. Just inside two or three
principal citizens were talking to the Superintendent--amongst them was
Mr. Stephen Folliot, the stepfather of young Bonham--a big, heavy-faced
man who had been a resident in the Close for some years, was known to be
of great wealth, and had a reputation as a grower of rare roses. He was
telling the Superintendent something--and the Superintendent beckoned to
Mitchington.

“Mr. Folliot says he saw this gentleman in the Cathedral,” he said.
“Can't have been so very long before the accident happened, Mr. Folliot,
from what you say.”

“As near as I can reckon, it would be five minutes to ten,” answered Mr.
Folliot. “I put it at that because I'd gone in for the morning service,
which is at ten. I saw him go up the inside stair to the clerestory
gallery--he was looking about him. Five minutes to ten--and it must have
happened immediately afterwards.”

Bryce heard this and turned away, making a calculation for himself. It
had been on the stroke of ten when he saw Ransford hurrying out of the
west porch. There was a stairway from the gallery down to that west
porch. What, then, was the inference? But for the moment he drew
none--instead, he went home to his rooms in Friary Lane, and shutting
himself up, drew from his pocket the scrap of paper he had taken from
the dead man.


CHAPTER V. THE SCRAP OF PAPER


When Bryce, in his locked room, drew that bit of paper from his pocket,
it was with the conviction that in it he held a clue to the secret of
the morning's adventure. He had only taken a mere glance at it as he
withdrew it from the dead man's purse, but he had seen enough of what
was written on it to make him certain that it was a document--if such a
mere fragment could be called a document--of no ordinary importance.
And now he unfolded and laid it flat on his table and looked at it
carefully, asking himself what was the real meaning of what he saw.

There was not much to see. The scrap of paper itself was evidently a
quarter of a leaf of old-fashioned, stoutish notepaper, somewhat yellow
with age, and bearing evidence of having been folded and kept flat in
the dead man's purse for some time--the creases were well-defined,
the edges were worn and slightly stained by long rubbing against the
leather. And in its centre were a few words, or, rather abbreviations of
words, in Latin, and some figures:

          In Para.  Wrycestr.  juxt.  tumb.
          Ric. Jenk. ex cap.  xxiii. xv.

Bryce at first sight took them to be a copy of some inscription but his
knowledge of Latin told him, a moment later, that instead of being an
inscription, it was a direction. And a very plain direction, too!--he
read it easily. In Paradise, at Wrychester, next to, or near, the tomb
of Richard Jenkins, or, possibly, Jenkinson, from, or behind, the head,
twenty-three, fifteen--inches, most likely. There was no doubt that
there was the meaning of the words. What, now, was it that lay behind
the tomb of Richard Jenkins, or Jenkinson, in Wrychester Paradise?--in
all probability twenty-three inches from the head-stone, and fifteen
inches beneath the surface. That was a question which Bryce immediately
resolved to find a satisfactory answer to; in the meantime there were
other questions which he set down in order on his mental tablets. They
were these:

 1.  Who, really, was the man who had registered at the
     Mitre under the name of John Braden?

 2.  Why did he wish to make a personal call on the
     Duke of Saxonsteade?

 3.  Was he some man who had known Ransford in time
     past--and whom Ransford had no desire to meet again?

 4.  Did Ransford meet him--in the Cathedral?

 5.  Was it Ransford who flung him to his death down
     St. Wrytha's Stair?

 6.  Was that the real reason of the agitation in which
     he, Bryce, had found Ransford a few moments after
     the discovery of the body?

There was plenty of time before him for the due solution of these
mysteries, reflected Bryce--and for solving another problem which might
possibly have some relationship to them--that of the exact connection
between Ransford and his two wards. Bryce, in telling Ransford that
morning of what was being said amongst the tea-table circles of the old
cathedral city, had purposely only told him half a tale. He knew,
and had known for months, that the society of the Close was greatly
exercised over the position of the Ransford menage. Ransford, a
bachelor, a well-preserved, active, alert man who was certainly of no
more than middle age and did not look his years, had come to Wrychester
only a few years previously, and had never shown any signs of forsaking
his single state. No one had ever heard him mention his family or
relations; then, suddenly, without warning, he had brought into his
house Mary Bewery, a handsome young woman of nineteen, who was said
to have only just left school, and her brother Richard, then a boy of
sixteen, who had certainly been at a public school of repute and was
entered at the famous Dean's School of Wrychester as soon as he came
to his new home. Dr. Ransford spoke of these two as his wards, without
further explanation; the society of the Close was beginning to want
much more explanation. Who were they--these two young people? Was Dr.
Ransford their uncle, their cousin--what was he to them? In any case,
in the opinion of the elderly ladies who set the tone of society in
Wrychester, Miss Bewery was much too young, and far too pretty, to be
left without a chaperon. But, up to then, no one had dared to say as
much to Dr. Ransford--instead, everybody said it freely behind his back.

Bryce had used eyes and ears in relation to the two young people. He had
been with Ransford a year when they arrived; admitted freely to their
company, he had soon discovered that whatever relationship existed
between them and Ransford, they had none with anybody else--that
they knew of. No letters came for them from uncles, aunts, cousins,
grandfathers, grandmothers. They appeared to have no memories or
reminiscences of relatives, nor of father or mother; there was a curious
atmosphere of isolation about them. They had plenty of talk about what
might be called their present--their recent schooldays, their youthful
experiences, games, pursuits--but none of what, under any circumstances,
could have been a very far-distant past. Bryce's quick and attentive
ears discovered things--for instance that for many years past Ransford
had been in the habit of spending his annual two months' holiday with
these two. Year after year--at any rate since the boy's tenth year--he
had taken them travelling; Bryce heard scraps of reminiscences of tours
in France, and in Switzerland, and in Ireland, and in Scotland--even as
far afield as the far north of Norway. It was easy to see that both boy
and girl had a mighty veneration for Ransford; just as easy to see that
Ransford took infinite pains to make life something more than happy and
comfortable for both. And Bryce, who was one of those men who
firmly believe that no man ever does anything for nothing and that
self-interest is the mainspring of Life, asked himself over and over
again the question which agitated the ladies of the Close: Who are
these two, and what is the bond between them and this sort of
fairy-godfather-guardian?

And now, as he put away the scrap of paper in a safely-locked desk,
Bryce asked himself another question: Had the events of that morning
anything to do with the mystery which hung around Dr. Ransford's wards?
If it had, then all the more reason why he should solve it. For Bryce
had made up his mind that, by hook or by crook, he would marry Mary
Bewery, and he was only too eager to lay hands on anything that would
help him to achieve that ambition. If he could only get Ransford into
his power--if he could get Mary Bewery herself into his power--well and
good. Once he had got her, he would be good enough to her--in his way.

Having nothing to do, Bryce went out after a while and strolled round to
the Wrychester Club--an exclusive institution, the members of which
were drawn from the leisured, the professional, the clerical, and the
military circles of the old city. And there, as he expected, he found
small groups discussing the morning's tragedy, and he joined one of
them, in which was Sackville Bonham, his presumptive rival, who was
busily telling three or four other young men what his stepfather, Mr.
Folliot, had to say about the event.

“My stepfather says--and I tell you he saw the man,” said Sackville, who
was noted in Wrychester circles as a loquacious and forward youth; “he
says that whatever happened must have happened as soon as ever the old
chap got up into that clerestory gallery. Look here!--it's like this.
My stepfather had gone in there for the morning service--strict old
church-goer he is, you know--and he saw this stranger going up the
stairway. He's positive, Mr. Folliot, that it was then five minutes to
ten. Now, then, I ask you--isn't he right, my stepfather, when he says
that it must have happened at once--immediately?

“Because that man, Varner, the mason, says he saw the man fall before
ten. What?”

One of the group nodded at Bryce.

“I should think Bryce knows what time it happened as well as anybody,”
 he said. “You were first on the spot, Bryce, weren't you?”

“After Varner,” answered Bryce laconically. “As to the time--I could fix
it in this way--the organist was just beginning a voluntary or something
of the sort.”

“That means ten o'clock--to the minute--when he was found!” exclaimed
Sackville triumphantly. “Of course, he'd fallen a minute or two before
that--which proves Mr. Folliot to be right. Now what does that prove?
Why, that the old chap's assailant, whoever he was, dogged him along
that gallery as soon as he entered, seized him when he got to the open
doorway, and flung him through! Clear as--as noonday!”

One of the group, a rather older man than the rest, who was leaning
back in a tilted chair, hands in pockets, watching Sackville Bonham
smilingly, shook his head and laughed a little.

“You're taking something for granted, Sackie, my son!” he said. “You're
adopting the mason's tale as true. But I don't believe the poor man was
thrown through that doorway at all--not I!”

Bryce turned sharply on this speaker--young Archdale, a member of a
well-known firm of architects.

“You don't?” he exclaimed. “But Varner says he saw him thrown!”

“Very likely,” answered Archdale. “But it would all happen so quickly
that Varner might easily be mistaken. I'm speaking of something I know.
I know every inch of the Cathedral fabric--ought to, as we're always
going over it, professionally. Just at that doorway, at the head of St.
Wrytha's Stair, the flooring of the clerestory gallery is worn so smooth
that it's like a piece of glass--and it slopes! Slopes at a very steep
angle, too, to the doorway itself. A stranger walking along there might
easily slip, and if the door was open, as it was, he'd be shot out and
into space before he knew what was happening.”

This theory produced a moment's silence--broken at last by Sackville
Bonham.

“Varner says he saw--saw!--a man's hand, a gentleman's hand,” insisted
Sackville. “He saw a white shirt cuff, a bit of the sleeve of a coat.
You're not going to get over that, you know. He's certain of it!”

“Varner may be as certain of it as he likes,” answered Archdale, almost
indifferently, “and still he may be mistaken. The probability is that
Varner was confused by what he saw. He may have had a white shirt cuff
and the sleeve of a black coat impressed upon him, as in a flash--and
they were probably those of the man who was killed. If, as I suggest,
the man slipped, and was shot out of that open doorway, he would execute
some violent and curious movements in the effort to save himself in
which his arms would play an important part. For one thing, he would
certainly throw out an arm--to clutch at anything. That's what Varner
most probably saw. There's no evidence whatever that the man was flung
down.”

Bryce turned away from the group of talkers to think over Archdale's
suggestion. If that suggestion had a basis of fact, it destroyed his own
theory that Ransford was responsible for the stranger's death. In
that case, what was the reason of Ransford's unmistakable agitation
on leaving the west porch, and of his attack--equally unmistakable--of
nerves in the surgery? But what Archdale had said made him inquisitive,
and after he had treated himself--in celebration of his freedom--to an
unusually good lunch at the Club, he went round to the Cathedral to make
a personal inspection of the gallery in the clerestory.

There was a stairway to that gallery in the corner of the south
transept, and Bryce made straight for it--only to find a policeman
there, who pointed to a placard on the turret door. “Closed, doctor--by
order of the Dean and Chapter,” he announced. “Till further orders. The
fact was, sir,” he went on confidentially, “after the news got out, so
many people came crowding in here and up to that gallery that the Dean
ordered all the entrances to be shut up at once--nobody's been allowed
up since noon.”

“I suppose you haven't heard anything of any strange person being seen
lurking about up there this morning?” asked Bryce.

“No, sir. But I've had a bit of a talk with some of the vergers,”
 replied the policeman, “and they say it's a most extraordinary thing
that none of them ever saw this strange gentleman go up there, nor even
heard any scuffle. They say--the vergers--that they were all about at
the time, getting ready for the morning service, and they neither saw
nor heard. Odd, sir, ain't it?”

“The whole thing's odd,” agreed Bryce, and left the Cathedral. He walked
round to the wicket gate which admitted to that side of Paradise--to
find another policeman posted there. “What!--is this closed, too?” he
asked.

“And time, sir,” said the man. “They'd ha' broken down all the shrubs
in the place if orders hadn't been given! They were mad to see where the
gentleman fell--came in crowds at dinnertime.”

Bryce nodded, and was turning away, when Dick Bewery came round a corner
from the Deanery Walk, evidently keenly excited. With him was a girl of
about his own age--a certain characterful young lady whom Bryce knew
as Betty Campany, daughter of the librarian to the Dean and Chapter and
therefore custodian of one of the most famous cathedral libraries in
the country. She, too, was apparently brimming with excitement, and her
pretty and vivacious face puckered itself into a frown as the policeman
smiled and shook his head.

“Oh, I say, what's that for?” exclaimed Dick Bewery. “Shut up?--what a
lot of rot! I say!--can't you let us go in--just for a minute?”

“Not for a pension, sir!” answered the policeman good-naturedly. “Don't
you see the notice? The Dean 'ud have me out of the force by tomorrow if
I disobeyed orders. No admittance, nowhere, nohow! But lor' bless
yer!” he added, glancing at the two young people. “There's nothing to
see--nothing!--as Dr. Bryce there can tell you.”

Dick, who knew nothing of the recent passages between his guardian and
the dismissed assistant, glanced at Bryce with interest.

“You were on the spot first, weren't you?” he asked: “Do you think it
really was murder?”

“I don't know what it was,” answered Bryce. “And I wasn't first on the
spot. That was Varner, the mason--he called me.” He turned from the lad
to glance at the girl, who was peeping curiously over the gate into
the yews and cypresses. “Do you think your father's at the Library just
now?” he asked. “Shall I find him there?”

“I should think he is,” answered Betty Campany. “He generally goes down
about this time.” She turned and pulled Dick Bewery's sleeve. “Let's go
up in the clerestory,” she said. “We can see that, anyway.”

“Also closed, miss,” said the policeman, shaking his head. “No
admittance there, neither. The public firmly warned off--so to speak. 'I
won't have the Cathedral turned into a peepshow!' that's precisely what
I heard the Dean say with my own ears. So--closed!”

The boy and the girl turned away and went off across the Close, and the
policeman looked after them and laughed.

“Lively young couple, that, sir!” he said. “What they call healthy
curiosity, I suppose? Plenty o' that knocking around in the city today.”

Bryce, who had half-turned in the direction of the Library, at the other
side of the Close, turned round again.

“Do you know if your people are doing anything about identifying the
dead man?” he asked. “Did you hear anything at noon?”

“Nothing but that there'll be inquiries through the newspapers, sir,”
 replied the policeman. “That's the surest way of finding something out.
And I did hear Inspector Mitchington say that they'd have to ask the
Duke if he knew anything about the poor man--I suppose he'd let fall
something about wanting to go over to Saxonsteade.”

Bryce went off in the direction of the Library thinking. The
newspapers?--yes, no better channel for spreading the news. If Mr. John
Braden had relations and friends, they would learn of his sad death
through the newspapers, and would come forward. And in that case--

“But it wouldn't surprise me,” mused Bryce, “if the name given at the
Mitre is an assumed name. I wonder if that theory of Archdale's is a
correct one?--however, there'll be more of that at the inquest tomorrow.
And in the meantime--let me find out something about the tomb of Richard
Jenkins, or Jenkinson--whoever he was.”

The famous Library of the Dean and Chapter of Wrychester was housed in
an ancient picturesque building in one corner of the Close, wherein, day
in and day out, amidst priceless volumes and manuscripts, huge folios
and weighty quartos, old prints, and relics of the mediaeval ages,
Ambrose Campany, the librarian, was pretty nearly always to be found,
ready to show his treasures to the visitors and tourists who came from
all parts of the world to see a collection well known to bibliophiles.
And Ambrose Campany, a cheery-faced, middle-aged man, with booklover and
antiquary written all over him, shockheaded, blue-spectacled, was there
now, talking to an old man whom Bryce knew as a neighbour of his
in Friary Lane--one Simpson Barker, a quiet, meditative old fellow,
believed to be a retired tradesman who spent his time in gentle
pottering about the city. Bryce, as he entered, caught what Campany was
just then saying.

“The most important thing I've heard about it,” said Campany, “is--that
book they found in the man's suit-case at the Mitre. I'm not a
detective--but there's a clue!”


CHAPTER VI. BY MISADVENTURE


Old Simpson Harker, who sat near the librarian's table, his hands
folded on the crook of his stout walking stick, glanced out of a pair
of unusually shrewd and bright eyes at Bryce as he crossed the room and
approached the pair of gossipers.

“I think the doctor was there when that book you're speaking of was
found,” he remarked. “So I understood from Mitchington.”

“Yes, I was there,” said Bryce, who was not unwilling to join in the
talk. He turned to Campany. “What makes you think there's a clue--in
that?” he asked.

“Why this,” answered the librarian. “Here's a man in possession of
an old history of Barthorpe. Barthorpe is a small market-town in the
Midlands--Leicestershire, I believe, of no particular importance that I
know of, but doubtless with a story of its own. Why should any one but a
Barthorpe man, past or present, be interested in that story so far as to
carry an old account of it with him? Therefore, I conclude this stranger
was a Barthorpe man. And it's at Barthorpe that I should make inquiries
about him.”

Simpson Harker made no remark, and Bryce remembered what Mr. Dellingham
had said when the book was found.

“Oh, I don't know!” he replied carelessly. “I don't see that
that follows. I saw the book--a curious old binding and queer old
copper-plates. The man may have picked it up for that reason--I've
bought old books myself for less.”

“All the same,” retorted Campany, “I should make inquiry at Barthorpe.
You've got to go on probabilities. The probabilities in this case are
that the man was interested in the book because it dealt with his own
town.”

Bryce turned away towards a wall on which hung a number of charts and
plans of Wrychester Cathedral and its precincts--it was to inspect one
of these that he had come to the Library. But suddenly remembering that
there was a question which he could ask without exciting any suspicion
or surmise, he faced round again on the librarian.

“Isn't there a register of burials within the Cathedral?” he inquired.
“Some book in which they're put down? I was looking in the Memorials of
Wrychester the other day, and I saw some names I want to trace.”

Campany lifted his quill pen and pointed to a case of big leather-bound
volumes in a far corner of the room.

“Third shelf from the bottom, doctor,” he replied. “You'll see two books
there--one's the register of all burials within the Cathedral itself
up to date: the other's the register of those in Paradise and the
cloisters. What names are you wanting to trace?”

But Bryce affected not to hear the last question; he walked over to
the place which Campany had indicated, and taking down the second book
carried it to an adjacent table. Campany called across the room to him.

“You'll find useful indexes at the end,” he said. “They're all brought
up to the present time--from four hundred years ago, nearly.”

Bryce turned to the index at the end of his book--an index written out
in various styles of handwriting. And within a minute he found the name
he wanted--there it was plainly before him--Richard Jenkins, died March
8th, 1715: buried, in Paradise, March 10th. He nearly laughed aloud
at the ease with which he was tracing out what at first had seemed a
difficult matter to investigate. But lest his task should seem too easy,
he continued to turn over the leaves of the big folio, and in order to
have an excuse if the librarian should ask him any further questions, he
memorized some of the names which he saw. And after a while he took the
book back to its shelf, and turned to the wall on which the charts and
maps were hung. There was one there of Paradise, whereon was marked the
site and names of all the tombs and graves in that ancient enclosure;
from it he hoped to ascertain the exact position and whereabouts of
Richard Jenkins's grave.

But here Bryce met his first check. Down each side of the old
chart--dated 1850--there was a tabulated list of the tombs in Paradise.
The names of families and persons were given in this list--against each
name was a number corresponding with the same number, marked on the
various divisions of the chart. And there was no Richard Jenkins on
that list--he went over it carefully twice, thrice. It was not there.
Obviously, if the tomb of Richard Jenkins, who was buried in Paradise in
1715, was still there, amongst the cypresses and yew trees, the name and
inscription on it had vanished, worn away by time and weather, when that
chart had been made, a hundred and thirty-five years later. And in that
case, what did the memorandum mean which Bryce had found in the dead
man's purse?

He turned away at last from the chart, at a loss--and Campany glanced at
him.

“Found what you wanted?” he asked.

“Oh, yes!” replied Bryce, primed with a ready answer. “I just wanted to
see where the Spelbanks were buried--quite a lot of them, I see.”

“Southeast corner of Paradise,” said Campany. “Several tombs. I could
have spared you the trouble of looking.”

“You're a regular encyclopaedia about the place,” laughed Bryce. “I
suppose you know every spout and gargoyle!”

“Ought to,” answered the librarian. “I've been fed on it, man and boy,
for five-and-forty years.”

Bryce made some fitting remark and went out and home to his rooms--there
to spend most of the ensuing evening in trying to puzzle out the various
mysteries of the day. He got no more light on them then, and he was
still exercising his brains on them when he went to the inquest next
morning--to find the Coroner's court packed to the doors with an
assemblage of townsfolk just as curious as he was. And as he sat
there, listening to the preliminaries, and to the evidence of the first
witnesses, his active and scheming mind figured to itself, not without
much cynical amusement, how a word or two from his lips would go far
to solve matters. He thought of what he might tell--if he told all the
truth. He thought of what he might get out of Ransford if he, Bryce,
were Coroner, or solicitor, and had Ransford in that witness-box.
He would ask him on his oath if he knew that dead man--if he had had
dealings with him in times past--if he had met and spoken to him on that
eventful morning--he would ask him, point-blank, if it was not his hand
that had thrown him to his death. But Bryce had no intention of making
any revelations just then--as for himself he was going to tell just as
much as he pleased and no more. And so he sat and heard--and knew from
what he heard that everybody there was in a hopeless fog, and that in
all that crowd there was but one man who had any real suspicion of the
truth, and that that man was himself.

The evidence given in the first stages of the inquiry was all known to
Bryce, and to most people in the court, already. Mr. Dellingham told
how he had met the dead man in the train, journeying from London to
Wrychester. Mrs. Partingley told how he had arrived at the Mitre,
registered in her book as Mr. John Braden, and had next morning asked if
he could get a conveyance for Saxonsteade in the afternoon, as he
wished to see the Duke. Mr. Folliot testified to having seen him in the
Cathedral, going towards one of the stairways leading to the gallery.
Varner--most important witness of all up to that point--told of what he
had seen. Bryce himself, followed by Ransford, gave medical evidence;
Mitchington told of his examination of the dead man's clothing and
effects in his room at the Mitre. And Mitchington added the first
information which was new to Bryce.

“In consequence of finding the book about Barthorpe in the suit-case,”
 said Mitchington, “we sent a long telegram yesterday to the police
there, telling them what had happened, and asking them to make the most
careful inquiries at once about any townsman of theirs of the name of
John Braden, and to wire us the result of such inquiries this morning.
This is their reply, received by us an hour ago. Nothing whatever is
known at Barthorpe--which is a very small town--of any person of that
name.”

So much for that, thought Bryce. He turned with more interest to the
next witness--the Duke of Saxonsteade, the great local magnate, a big,
bluff man who had been present in court since the beginning of the
proceedings, in which he was manifestly highly interested. It was
possible that he might be able to tell something of moment--he might,
after all, know something of this apparently mysterious stranger, who,
for anything that Mrs. Partingley or anybody else could say to the
contrary, might have had an appointment and business with him.

But his Grace knew nothing. He had never heard the name of John Braden
in his life--so far as he remembered. He had just seen the body of the
unfortunate man and had looked carefully at the features. He was not a
man of whom he had any knowledge whatever--he could not recollect ever
having seen him anywhere at any time. He knew literally nothing of
him--could not think of any reason at all why this Mr. John Braden
should wish to see him.

“Your Grace has, no doubt, had business dealings with a good many people
at one time or another,” suggested the Coroner. “Some of them, perhaps,
with men whom your Grace only saw for a brief space of time--a few
minutes, possibly. You don't remember ever seeing this man in that way?”

“I'm credited with having an unusually good memory for faces,” answered
the Duke. “And--if I may say so--rightly. But I don't remember this
man at all--in fact, I'd go as far as to say that I'm positive I've
never--knowingly--set eyes on him in my life.”

“Can your Grace suggest any reason at all why he should wish to call on
you?” asked the Coroner.

“None! But then,” replied the Duke, “there might be many
reasons--unknown to me, but at which I can make a guess. If he was an
antiquary, there are lots of old things at Saxonsteade which he might
wish to see. Or he might be a lover of pictures--our collection is a bit
famous, you know. Perhaps he was a bookman--we have some rare editions.
I could go on multiplying reasons--but to what purpose?”

“The fact is, your Grace doesn't know him and knows nothing about him,”
 observed the Coroner.

“Just so--nothing!” agreed the Duke and stepped down again.

It was at this stage that the Coroner sent the jurymen away in charge of
his officer to make a careful personal inspection of the gallery in the
clerestory. And while they were gone there was some commotion caused
in the court by the entrance of a police official who conducted to the
Coroner a middle-aged, well-dressed man whom Bryce at once set down as
a London commercial magnate of some quality. Between the new arrival
and the Coroner an interchange of remarks was at once made, shared in
presently by some of the officials at the table. And when the jury came
back the stranger was at once ushered into the witness-box, and the
Coroner turned to the jury and the court.

“We are unexpectedly able to get some evidence of identity, gentlemen,”
 he observed. “The gentleman who has just stepped into the witness-box
is Mr. Alexander Chilstone, manager of the London & Colonies Bank, in
Threadneedle Street. Mr. Chilstone saw particulars of this matter in the
newspapers this morning, and he at once set off to Wrychester to tell
us what he knows of the dead man. We are very much obliged to Mr.
Chilstone--and when he has been sworn he will perhaps kindly tell us
what he can.”

In the midst of the murmur of sensation which ran round the court, Bryce
indulged himself with a covert look at Ransford who was sitting opposite
to him, beyond the table in the centre of the room. He saw at once that
Ransford, however strenuously he might be fighting to keep his
face under control, was most certainly agitated by the Coroner's
announcement. His cheeks had paled, his eyes were a little dilated, his
lips parted as he stared at the bank-manager--altogether, it was more
than mere curiosity that was indicated on his features. And Bryce,
satisfied and secretly elated, turned to hear what Mr. Alexander
Chilstone had to tell.

That was not much--but it was of considerable importance. Only two
days before, said Mr. Chilstone--that was, on the day previous to his
death--Mr. John Braden had called at the London & Colonies Bank, of
which he, Mr. Chilstone, was manager, and introducing himself as having
just arrived in England from Australia, where, he said, he had been
living for some years, had asked to be allowed to open an account. He
produced some references from agents of the London & Colonies Bank, in
Melbourne, which were highly satisfactory; the account being opened, he
paid into it a sum of ten thousand pounds in a draft at sight drawn by
one of those agents. He drew nothing against this, remarking casually
that he had plenty of money in his pocket for the present: he did not
even take the cheque-book which was offered him, saying that he would
call for it later.

“He did not give us any address in London, nor in England,” continued
the witness. “He told me that he had only arrived at Charing Cross that
very morning, having travelled from Paris during the night. He said that
he should settle down for a time at some residential hotel in London,
and in the meantime he had one or two calls, or visits, to make in the
country: when he returned from them, he said, he would call on me again.
He gave me very little information about himself: it was not necessary,
for his references from our agents in Australia were quite satisfactory.
But he did mention that he had been out there for some years, and had
speculated in landed property--he also said that he was now going to
settle in England for good. That,” concluded Mr. Chilstone, “is all I
can tell of my own knowledge. But,” he added, drawing a newspaper from
his pocket, “here is an advertisement which I noticed in this morning's
Times as I came down. You will observe,” he said, as he passed it to
the Coroner, “that it has certainly been inserted by our unfortunate
customer.”

The Coroner glanced at a marked passage in the personal column of the
Times, and read it aloud:

“The advertisement is as follows,” he announced. “'If this meets the eye
of old friend Marco, he will learn that Sticker wishes to see him
again. Write J. Braden, c/o London & Colonies Bank, Threadneedle Street,
London.'”

Bryce was keeping a quiet eye on Ransford. Was he mistaken in believing
that he saw him start; that he saw his cheek flush as he heard the
advertisement read out? He believed he was not mistaken--but if he was
right, Ransford the next instant regained full control of himself and
made no sign. And Bryce turned again to Coroner and witness.

But the witness had no more to say--except to suggest that the bank's
Melbourne agents should be cabled to for information, since it was
unlikely that much more could be got in England. And with that the
middle stage of the proceedings ended--and the last one came, watched
by Bryce with increasing anxiety. For it was soon evident, from certain
remarks made by the Coroner, that the theory which Archdale had put
forward at the club in Bryce's hearing the previous day had gained
favour with the authorities, and that the visit of the jurymen to the
scene of the disaster had been intended by the Coroner to predispose
them in behalf of it. And now Archdale himself, as representing the
architects who held a retaining fee in connection with the Cathedral,
was called to give his opinion--and he gave it in almost the same words
which Bryce had heard him use twenty-four hours previously. After him
came the master-mason, expressing the same decided conviction--that the
real truth was that the pavement of the gallery had at that particular
place become so smooth, and was inclined towards the open doorway at
such a sharp angle, that the unfortunate man had lost his footing on it,
and before he could recover it had been shot out of the arch and over
the broken head of St. Wrytha's Stair. And though, at a juryman's wish,
Varner was recalled, and stuck stoutly to his original story of having
seen a hand which, he protested, was certainly not that of the dead
man, it soon became plain that the jury shared the Coroner's belief that
Varner in his fright and excitement had been mistaken, and no one was
surprised when the foreman, after a very brief consultation with his
fellows, announced a verdict of death by misadventure.

“So the city's cleared of the stain of murder!” said a man who sat next
to Bryce. “That's a good job, anyway! Nasty thing, doctor, to think of
a murder being committed in a cathedral. There'd be a question of
sacrilege, of course--and all sorts of complications.”

Bryce made no answer. He was watching Ransford, who was talking to the
Coroner. And he was not mistaken now--Ransford's face bore all the
signs of infinite relief. From--what? Bryce turned, to leave the stuffy,
rapidly-emptying court. And as he passed the centre table he saw old
Simpson Harker, who, after sitting in attentive silence for three hours
had come up to it, picked up the “History of Barthorpe” which had
been found in Braden's suit-case and was inquisitively peering at its
title-page.


CHAPTER VII. THE DOUBLE TRAIL


Pemberton Bryce was not the only person in Wrychester who was watching
Ransford with keen attention during these events. Mary Bewery, a young
woman of more than usual powers of observation and penetration, had been
quick to see that her guardian's distress over the affair in Paradise
was something out of the common. She knew Ransford for an exceedingly
tender-hearted man, with a considerable spice of sentiment in his
composition: he was noted for his more than professional interest in the
poorer sort of his patients and had gained a deserved reputation in the
town for his care of them. But it was somewhat surprising, even to Mary,
that he should be so much upset by the death of a total stranger as to
lose his appetite, and, for at any rate a couple of days, be so restless
that his conduct could not fail to be noticed by herself and her
brother. His remarks on the tragedy were conventional enough--a most
distressing affair--a sad fate for the poor fellow--most unexplainable
and mysterious, and so on--but his concern obviously went beyond that.
He was ill at ease when she questioned him about the facts; almost
irritable when Dick Bewery, schoolboy-like, asked him concerning
professional details; she was sure, from the lines about his eyes and a
worn look on his face, that he had passed a restless night when he came
down to breakfast on the morning of the inquest. But when he returned
from the inquest she noticed a change--it was evident, to her ready
wits, that Ransford had experienced a great relief. He spoke of relief,
indeed, that night at dinner, observing that the verdict which the jury
had returned had cleared the air of a foul suspicion; it would have
been no pleasant matter, he said, if Wrychester Cathedral had gained an
unenviable notoriety as the scene of a murder.

“All the same,” remarked Dick, who knew all the talk of the town,
“Varner persists in sticking to what he's said all along. Varner
says--said this afternoon, after the inquest was over--that he's
absolutely certain of what he saw, and that he not only saw a hand in
a white cuff and black coat sleeve, but that he saw the sun gleam for
a second on the links in the cuff, as if they were gold or diamonds.
Pretty stiff evidence that, sir, isn't it?”

“In the state of mind in which Varner was at that moment,” replied
Ransford, “he wouldn't be very well able to decide definitely on what he
really did see. His vision would retain confused images. Probably he saw
the dead man's hand--he was wearing a black coat and white linen. The
verdict was a most sensible one.”

No more was said after that, and that evening Ransford was almost
himself again. But not quite himself. Mary caught him looking very
grave, in evident abstraction, more than once; more than once she heard
him sigh heavily. But he said no more of the matter until two days
later, when, at breakfast, he announced his intention of attending John
Braden's funeral, which was to take place that morning.

“I've ordered the brougham for eleven,” he said, “and I've arranged with
Dr. Nicholson to attend to any urgent call that comes in between that
and noon--so, if there is any such call, you can telephone to him. A few
of us are going to attend this poor man's funeral--it would be too bad
to allow a stranger to go to his grave unattended, especially after
such a fate. There'll be somebody representing the Dean and Chapter,
and three or four principal townsmen, so he'll not be quite neglected.
And”--here he hesitated and looked a little nervously at Mary, to whom
he was telling all this, Dick having departed for school--“there's a
little matter I wish you'd attend to--you'll do it better than I should.
The man seems to have been friendless; here, at any rate--no relations
have come forward, in spite of the publicity--so--don't you think it
would be rather--considerate, eh?--to put a wreath, or a cross, or
something of that sort on his grave--just to show--you know?”

“Very kind of you to think of it,” said Mary. “What do you wish me to
do?”

“If you'd go to Gardales', the florists, and order--something fitting,
you know,” replied Ransford, “and afterwards--later in the day--take it
to St. Wigbert's Churchyard--he's to be buried there--take it--if you
don't mind--yourself, you know.”

“Certainly,” answered Mary. “I'll see that it's done.”

She would do anything that seemed good to Ransford--but all the same she
wondered at this somewhat unusual show of interest in a total stranger.
She put it down at last to Ransford's undoubted sentimentality--the
man's sad fate had impressed him. And that afternoon the sexton at St.
Wigbert's pointed out the new grave to Miss Bewery and Mr. Sackville
Bonham, one carrying a wreath and the other a large bunch of lilies.
Sackville, chancing to encounter Mary at the florist's, whither he had
repaired to execute a commission for his mother, had heard her business,
and had been so struck by the notion--or by a desire to ingratiate
himself with Miss Bewery--that he had immediately bought flowers
himself--to be put down to her account--and insisted on accompanying
Mary to the churchyard.

Bryce heard of this tribute to John Braden next day--from Mrs. Folliot,
Sackville Bonham's mother, a large lady who dominated certain circles
of Wrychester society in several senses. Mrs. Folliot was one of those
women who have been gifted by nature with capacity--she was conspicuous
in many ways. Her voice was masculine; she stood nearly six feet in her
stoutly-soled shoes; her breadth corresponded to her height; her eyes
were piercing, her nose Roman; there was not a curate in Wrychester
who was not under her thumb, and if the Dean himself saw her coming, he
turned hastily into the nearest shop, sweating with fear lest she should
follow him. Endued with riches and fortified by assurance, Mrs. Folliot
was the presiding spirit in many movements of charity and benevolence;
there were people in Wrychester who were unkind enough to say--behind
her back--that she was as meddlesome as she was most undoubtedly
autocratic, but, as one of her staunchest clerical defenders once
pointed out, these grumblers were what might be contemptuously dismissed
as five-shilling subscribers. Mrs. Folliot, in her way, was undoubtedly
a power--and for reasons of his own Pemberton Bryce, whenever he met
her--which was fairly often--was invariably suave and polite.

“Most mysterious thing, this, Dr. Bryce,” remarked Mrs. Folliot in her
deepest tones, encountering Bryce, the day after the funeral, at the
corner of a back street down which she was about to sail on one of her
charitable missions, to the terror of any of the women who happened to
be caught gossiping. “What, now, should make Dr. Ransford cause flowers
to be laid on the grave of a total stranger? A sentimental feeling?
Fiddle-de-dee! There must be some reason.”

“I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Mrs. Folliot,”
 answered Bryce, whose ears had already lengthened. “Has Dr. Ransford
been laying flowers on a grave?--I didn't know of it. My engagement with
Dr. Ransford terminated two days ago--so I've seen nothing of him.”

“My son, Mr. Sackville Bonham,” said Mrs. Folliot, “tells me
that yesterday Miss Bewery came into Gardales' and spent a
sovereign--actually a sovereign!--on a wreath, which, she told
Sackville, she was about to carry, at her guardian's desire, to
this strange man's grave. Sackville, who is a warm-hearted boy, was
touched--he, too, bought flowers and accompanied Miss Bewery. Most
extraordinary! A perfect stranger! Dear me--why, nobody knows who the
man was!”

“Except his bank-manager,” remarked Bryce, “who says he's holding ten
thousand pounds of his.”

“That,” admitted Mrs. Folliot gravely, “is certainly a consideration.
But then, who knows?--the money may have been stolen. Now, really, did
you ever hear of a quite respectable man who hadn't even a visiting-card
or a letter upon him? And from Australia, too!--where all the people
that are wanted run away to! I have actually been tempted to wonder, Dr.
Bryce, if Dr. Ransford knew this man--in years gone by? He might have,
you know, he might have--certainly! And that, of course, would explain
the flowers.”

“There is a great deal in the matter that requires explanation, Mrs.
Folliot,” said Bryce. He was wondering if it would be wise to instil
some minute drop of poison into the lady's mind, there to increase in
potency and in due course to spread. “I--of course, I may have been
mistaken--I certainly thought Dr. Ransford seemed unusually agitated by
this affair--it appeared to upset him greatly.”

“So I have heard--from others who were at the inquest,” responded Mrs.
Folliot. “In my opinion our Coroner--a worthy man otherwise--is not
sufficiently particular. I said to Mr. Folliot this morning, on reading
the newspaper, that in my view that inquest should have been adjourned
for further particulars. Now I know of one particular that was never
mentioned at the inquest!”

“Oh?” said Bryce. “And what?”

“Mrs. Deramore, who lives, as you know, next to Dr. Ransford,” replied
Mrs. Folliot, “told me this morning that on the morning of the accident,
happening to look out of one of her upper windows, she saw a man whom,
from the description given in the newspapers, was, Mrs. Deramore feels
assured, was the mysterious stranger, crossing the Close towards the
Cathedral in, Mrs. Deramore is positive, a dead straight line from
Dr. Ransford's garden--as if he had been there. Dr. Bryce!--a direct
question should have been asked of Dr. Ransford--had he ever seen that
man before?”

“Ah, but you see, Mrs. Folliot, the Coroner didn't know what Mrs.
Deramore saw, so he couldn't ask such a question, nor could any one
else,” remarked Bryce, who was wondering how long Mrs. Deramore remained
at her upper window and if she saw him follow Braden. “But there are
circumstances, no doubt, which ought to be inquired into. And it's
certainly very curious that Dr. Ransford should send a wreath to the
grave of--a stranger.”

He went away convinced that Mrs. Folliot's inquisitiveness had been
aroused, and that her tongue would not be idle: Mrs. Folliot, left to
herself, had the gift of creating an atmosphere, and if she once got
it into her head that there was some mysterious connection between Dr.
Ransford and the dead man, she would never rest until she had spread her
suspicions. But as for Bryce himself, he wanted more than suspicions--he
wanted facts, particulars, data. And once more he began to go over the
sum of evidence which had accrued.

The question of the scrap of paper found in Braden's purse, and of the
exact whereabouts of Richard Jenkins's grave in Paradise, he left
for the time being. What was now interesting him chiefly was the
advertisement in the Times to which the bank-manager from London had
drawn attention. He had made haste to buy a copy of the Times and to
cut out the advertisement. There it was--old friend Marco was wanted by
(presumably old friend) Sticker, and whoever Sticker might be he could
certainly be found under care of J. Braden. It had never been in doubt
a moment, in Bryce's mind, that Sticker was J. Braden himself. Who, now,
was Marco? Who--a million to one on it!--but Ransford, whose Christian
name was Mark?

He reckoned up his chances of getting at the truth of the affair anew
that night. As things were, it seemed unlikely that any relations of
Braden would now turn up. The Wrychester Paradise case, as the reporters
had aptly named it, had figured largely in the newspapers, London and
provincial; it could scarcely have had more publicity--yet no one, save
this bank-manager, had come forward. If there had been any one to
come forward the bank-manager's evidence would surely have proved an
incentive to speed--for there was a sum of ten thousand pounds awaiting
John Braden's next-of-kin. In Bryce's opinion the chance of putting in
a claim to ten thousand pounds is not left waiting forty-eight
hours--whoever saw such a chance would make instant use of telegraph or
telephone. But no message from anybody professing relationship with the
dead man had so far reached the Wrychester police.

When everything had been taken into account, Bryce saw no better clue
for the moment than that suggested by Ambrose Campany--Barthorpe.
Ambrose Campany, bookworm though he was, was a shrewd, sharp fellow,
said Bryce--a man of ideas. There was certainly much in his suggestion
that a man wasn't likely to buy an old book about a little insignificant
town like Barthorpe unless he had some interest in it--Barthorpe, if
Campany's theory were true, was probably the place of John Braden's
origin.

Therefore, information about Braden, leading to knowledge of his
association or connection with Ransford, might be found at Barthorpe.
True, the Barthorpe police had already reported that they could tell
nothing about any Braden, but that, in Bryce's opinion, was neither
here nor there--he had already come to the conclusion that Braden was an
assumed name. And if he went to Barthorpe, he was not going to trouble
the police--he knew better methods than that of finding things out. Was
he going?--was it worth his while? A moment's reflection decided that
matter--anything was worth his while which would help him to get a
strong hold on Mark Ransford. And always practical in his doings, he
walked round to the Free Library, obtained a gazeteer, and looked up
particulars of Barthorpe. There he learnt that Barthorpe was an ancient
market-town of two thousand inhabitants in the north of Leicestershire,
famous for nothing except that it had been the scene of a battle at
the time of the Wars of the Roses, and that its trade was mainly in
agriculture and stocking-making--evidently a slow, sleepy old place.

That night Bryce packed a hand-bag with small necessaries for a few
days' excursion, and next morning he took an early train to London; the
end of that afternoon found him in a Midland northern-bound express,
looking out on the undulating, green acres of Leicestershire. And while
his train was making a three minutes' stop at Leicester itself, the
purpose of his journey was suddenly recalled to him by hearing the
strident voices of the porters on the platform.

“Barthorpe next stop!--next stop Barthorpe!”

One of two other men who shared a smoking compartment with Bryce turned
to his companion as the train moved off again.

“Barthorpe?” he remarked. “That's the place that was mentioned in
connection with that very queer affair at Wrychester, that's been
reported in the papers so much these last few days. The mysterious
stranger who kept ten thousand in a London bank, and of whom nobody
seems to know anything, had nothing on him but a history of Barthorpe.
Odd! And yet, though you'd think he'd some connection with the place, or
had known it, they say nobody at Barthorpe knows anything about anybody
of his name.”

“Well, I don't know that there is anything so very odd about it, after
all,” replied the other man. “He may have picked up that old book for
one of many reasons that could be suggested. No--I read all that case
in the papers, and I wasn't so much impressed by the old book feature
of it. But I'll tell you what--there was a thing struck me. I know this
Barthorpe district--we shall be in it in a few minutes--I've been a good
deal over it. This strange man's name was given in the papers as John
Braden. Now close to Barthorpe--a mile or two outside it, there's a
village of that name--Braden Medworth. That's a curious coincidence--and
taken in conjunction with the man's possession of an old book about
Barthorpe--why, perhaps there's something in it--possibly more than I
thought for at first.”

“Well--it's an odd case--a very odd case,” said the first speaker.
“And--as there's ten thousand pounds in question, more will be heard of
it. Somebody'll be after that, you may be sure!”

Bryce left the train at Barthorpe thanking his good luck--the man in
the far corner had unwittingly given him a hint. He would pay a visit to
Braden Medworth--the coincidence was too striking to be neglected. But
first Barthorpe itself--a quaint old-world little market-town, in
which some of even the principal houses still wore roofs of thatch, and
wherein the old custom of ringing the curfew bell was kept up. He found
an old-fashioned hotel in the marketplace, under the shadow of the
parish church, and in its oak-panelled dining-room, hung about with
portraits of masters of foxhounds and queer old prints of sporting and
coaching days, he dined comfortably and well.

It was too late to attempt any investigations that evening, and
when Bryce had finished his leisurely dinner he strolled into the
smoking-room--an even older and quainter apartment than that which
he had just left. It was one of those rooms only found in very old
houses--a room of nooks and corners, with a great open fireplace, and
old furniture and old pictures and curiosities--the sort of place to
which the old-fashioned tradesmen of the small provincial towns still
resort of an evening rather than patronize the modern political clubs.
There were several men of this sort in the room when Bryce entered,
talking local politics amongst themselves, and he found a quiet corner
and sat down in it to smoke, promising himself some amusement from the
conversation around him; it was his way to find interest and amusement
in anything that offered. But he had scarcely settled down in a
comfortably cushioned elbow chair when the door opened again and into
the room walked old Simpson Harker.


CHAPTER VIII. THE BEST MAN


Old Harker's shrewd eyes, travelling round the room as if to inspect the
company in which he found himself, fell almost immediately on Bryce--but
not before Bryce had had time to assume an air and look of innocent
and genuine surprise. Harker affected no surprise at all--he looked the
astonishment he felt as the younger man rose and motioned him to the
comfortable easy-chair which he himself had just previously taken.

“Dear me!” he exclaimed, nodding his thanks. “I'd no idea that I should
meet you in these far-off parts, Dr. Bryce! This is a long way from
Wrychester, sir, for Wrychester folk to meet in.”

“I'd no idea of meeting you, Mr. Harker,” responded Bryce. “But it's
a small world, you know, and there are a good many coincidences in it.
There's nothing very wonderful in my presence here, though--I ran down
to see after a country practice--I've left Dr. Ransford.”

He had the lie ready as soon as he set eyes on Harker, and whether
the old man believed it or not, he showed no sign of either belief or
disbelief. He took the chair which Bryce drew forward and pulled out an
old-fashioned cigar-case, offering it to his companion.

“Will you try one, doctor?” he asked. “Genuine stuff that, sir--I've a
friend in Cuba who remembers me now and then. No,” he went on, as Bryce
thanked him and took a cigar, “I didn't know you'd finished with the
doctor. Quietish place this to practise in, I should think--much quieter
even than our sleepy old city.”

“You know it?” inquired Bryce.

“I've a friend lives here--old friend of mine,” answered Harker. “I come
down to see him now and then--I've been here since yesterday. He does a
bit of business for me. Stopping long, doctor?”

“Only just to look round,” answered Bryce.

“I'm off tomorrow morning--eleven o'clock,” said Harker. “It's a longish
journey to Wrychester--for old bones like mine.”

“Oh, you're all right!--worth half a dozen younger men,” responded
Bryce. “You'll see a lot of your contemporaries out, Mr. Harker.
Well--as you've treated me to a very fine cigar, now you'll let me treat
you to a drop of whisky?--they generally have something of pretty good
quality in these old-fashioned establishments, I believe.”

The two travellers sat talking until bedtime--but neither made any
mention of the affair which had recently set all Wrychester agog with
excitement. But Bryce was wondering all the time if his companion's
story of having a friend at Barthorpe was no more than an excuse, and
when he was alone in his own bedroom and reflecting more seriously he
came to the conclusion that old Harker was up to some game of his own in
connection with the Paradise mystery.

“The old chap was in the Library when Ambrose Campany said that there
was a clue in that Barthorpe history,” he mused. “I saw him myself
examining the book after the inquest. No, no, Mr. Harker!--the facts
are too plain--the evidences too obvious. And yet--what interest has a
retired old tradesman of Wrychester got in this affair? I'd give a good
deal to know what Harker really is doing here--and who his Barthorpe
friend is.”

If Bryce had risen earlier next morning, and had taken the trouble to
track old Harker's movements, he would have learnt something that would
have made him still more suspicious. But Bryce, seeing no reason for
hurry, lay in bed till well past nine o'clock, and did not present
himself in the coffee-room until nearly half-past ten. And at that
hour Simpson Harker, who had breakfasted before nine, was in close
consultation with his friend--that friend being none other than the
local superintendent of police, who was confidentially closeted with the
old man in his private house, whither Harker, by previous arrangement,
had repaired as soon as his breakfast was over. Had Bryce been able to
see through walls or hear through windows, he would have been surprised
to find that the Harker of this consultation was not the quiet,
easy-going, gossipy old gentleman of Wrychester, but an eminently
practical and business-like man of affairs.

“And now as regards this young fellow who's staying across there at the
Peacock,” he was saying in conclusion, at the very time that Bryce was
leisurely munching his second mutton chop in the Peacock coffee-room,
“he's after something or other--his talk about coming here to see after
a practice is all lies!--and you'll keep an eye on him while he's
in your neighbourhood. Put your best plainclothes man on to him at
once--he'll easily know him from the description I gave you--and let him
shadow him wherever he goes. And then let me know of his movement--he's
certainly on the track of something, and what he does may be useful
to me--I can link it up with my own work. And as regards the other
matter--keep me informed if you come on anything further. Now I'll go
out by your garden and down the back of the town to the station. Let me
know, by the by, when this young man at the Peacock leaves here, and, if
possible--and you can find out--for where.”

Bryce was all unconscious that any one was interested in his movements
when he strolled out into Barthorpe market-place just after eleven.
He had asked a casual question of the waiter and found that the old
gentleman had departed--he accordingly believed himself free from
observation. And forthwith he set about his work of inquiry in his own
fashion. He was not going to draw any attention to himself by asking
questions of present-day inhabitants, whose curiosity might then be
aroused; he knew better methods than that. Every town, said Bryce to
himself, possesses public records--parish registers, burgess rolls,
lists of voters; even small towns have directories which are more
or less complete--he could search these for any mention or record of
anybody or any family of the name of Braden. And he spent all that day
in that search, inspecting numerous documents and registers and books,
and when evening came he had a very complete acquaintance with the
family nomenclature of Barthorpe, and he was prepared to bet odds
against any one of the name of Braden having lived there during the past
half-century. In all his searching he had not once come across the name.

The man who had spent a very lazy day in keeping an eye on Bryce, as he
visited the various public places whereat he made his researches, was
also keeping an eye upon him next morning, when Bryce, breakfasting
earlier than usual, prepared for a second day's labours. He followed
his quarry away from the little town: Bryce was walking out to Braden
Medworth. In Bryce's opinion, it was something of a wild-goose chase to
go there, but the similarity in the name of the village and of the dead
man at Wrychester might have its significance, and it was but a two
miles' stroll from Barthorpe. He found Braden Medworth a very small,
quiet, and picturesque place, with an old church on the banks of a river
which promised good sport to anglers. And there he pursued his tactics
of the day before and went straight to the vicarage and its vicar, with
a request to be allowed to inspect the parish registers. The vicar,
having no objection to earning the resultant fees, hastened to comply
with Bryce's request, and inquired how far back he wanted to search and
for what particular entry.

“No particular entry,” answered Bryce, “and as to period--fairly recent.
The fact is, I am interested in names. I am thinking”--here he used
one more of his easily found inventions--“of writing a book on English
surnames, and am just now inspecting parish registers in the Midlands
for that purpose.”

“Then I can considerably simplify your labours,” said the vicar, taking
down a book from one of his shelves. “Our parish registers have been
copied and printed, and here is the volume--everything is in there from
1570 to ten years ago, and there is a very full index. Are you staying
in the neighbourhood--or the village?”

“In the neighbourhood, yes; in the village, no longer than the time I
shall spend in getting some lunch at the inn yonder,” answered Bryce,
nodding through an open window at an ancient tavern which stood in the
valley beneath, close to an old stone bridge. “Perhaps you will kindly
lend me this book for an hour?--then, if I see anything very noteworthy
in the index, I can look at the actual registers when I bring it back.”

The vicar replied that that was precisely what he had been about to
suggest, and Bryce carried the book away. And while he sat in the inn
parlour awaiting his lunch, he turned to the carefully-compiled index,
glancing it through rapidly. On the third page he saw the name Bewery.

If the man who had followed Bryce from Barthorpe to Braden Medworth had
been with him in the quiet inn parlour he would have seen his quarry
start, and heard him let a stifled exclamation escape his lips. But the
follower, knowing his man was safe for an hour, was in the bar outside
eating bread and cheese and drinking ale, and Bryce's surprise was
witnessed by no one. Yet he had been so much surprised that if all
Wrychester had been there he could not, despite his self-training in
watchfulness, have kept back either start or exclamation.

Bewery! A name so uncommon that here--here, in this out-of-the-way
Midland village!--there must be some connection with the object of his
search. There the name stood out before him, to the exclusion of all
others--Bewery--with just one entry of figures against it. He turned to
page 387 with a sense of sure discovery.

And there an entry caught his eye at once--and he knew that he had
discovered more than he had ever hoped for. He read it again and again,
gloating over his wonderful luck.

June 19th, 1891. John Brake, bachelor, of the parish of St. Pancras,
London, to Mary Bewery, spinster, of this parish, by the Vicar.
Witnesses, Charles Claybourne, Selina Womersley, Mark Ransford.

Twenty-two years ago! The Mary Bewery whom Bryce knew in Wrychester was
just about twenty--this Mary Bewery, spinster, of Braden Medworth, was,
then, in all probability, her mother. But John Brake who married that
Mary Bewery--who was he? Who indeed, laughed Bryce, but John Braden,
who had just come by his death in Wrychester Paradise? And there was the
name of Mark Ransford as witness. What was the further probability? That
Mark Ransford had been John Brake's best man; that he was the Marco
of the recent Times advertisement; that John Braden, or Brake, was the
Sticker of the same advertisement. Clear!--clear as noonday! And--what
did it all mean, and imply, and what bearing had it on Braden or Brake's
death?

Before he ate his cold beef, Bryce had copied the entry from the
reprinted register, and had satisfied himself that Ransford was not a
name known to that village--Mark Ransford was the only person of the
name mentioned in the register. And his lunch done, he set off for the
vicarage again, intent on getting further information, and before he
reached the vicarage gates noticed, by accident, a place whereat he was
more likely to get it than from the vicar--who was a youngish man. At
the end of the few houses between the inn and the bridge he saw a little
shop with the name Charles Claybourne painted roughly above its open
window. In that open window sat an old, cheery-faced man, mending shoes,
who blinked at the stranger through his big spectacles.

Bryce saw his chance and turned in--to open the book and point out the
marriage entry.

“Are you the Charles Claybourne mentioned there?” he asked, without
ceremony.

“That's me, sir!” replied the old shoemaker briskly, after a glance.
“Yes--right enough!”

“How came you to witness that marriage?” inquired Bryce.

The old man nodded at the church across the way.

“I've been sexton and parish clerk two-and-thirty years, sir,” he said.
“And I took it on from my father--and he had the job from his father.”

“Do you remember this marriage?” asked Bryce, perching himself on the
bench at which the shoemaker was working. “Twenty-two years since, I
see.”

“Aye, as if it was yesterday!” answered the old man with a smile. “Miss
Bewery's marriage?--why, of course!”

“Who was she?” demanded Bryce.

“Governess at the vicarage,” replied Claybourne. “Nice, sweet young
lady.”

“And the man she married?--Mr. Brake,” continued Bryce. “Who was he?”

“A young gentleman that used to come here for the fishing, now and
then,” answered Claybourne, pointing at the river. “Famous for our trout
we are here, you know, sir. And Brake had come here for three years
before they were married--him and his friend Mr. Ransford.”

“You remember him, too?” asked Bryce.

“Remember both of 'em very well indeed,” said Claybourne, “though I
never set eyes on either after Miss Mary was wed to Mr. Brake. But I
saw plenty of 'em both before that. They used to put up at the inn
there--that I saw you come out of just now. They came two or three times
a year--and they were a bit thick with our parson of that time--not this
one: his predecessor--and they used to go up to the vicarage and smoke
their pipes and cigars with him--and of course, Mr. Brake and the
governess fixed it up. Though, you know, at one time it was considered
it was going to be her and the other young gentleman, Mr. Ransford--yes!
But, in the end, it was Brake--and Ransford stood best man for him.”

Bruce assimilated all this information greedily--and asked for more.

“I'm interested in that entry,” he said, tapping the open book. “I know
some people of the name of Bewery--they may be relatives.”

The shoemaker shook his head as if doubtful.

“I remember hearing it said,” he remarked, “that Miss Mary had no
relations. She'd been with the old vicar some time, and I don't remember
any relations ever coming to see her, nor her going away to see any.”

“Do you know what Brake was?” asked Bryce. “As you say he came here for
a good many times before the marriage, I suppose you'd hear something
about his profession, or trade, or whatever it was?”

“He was a banker, that one,” replied Claybourne. “A banker--that was
his trade, sir. T'other gentleman, Mr. Ransford, he was a doctor--I mind
that well enough, because once when him and Mr. Brake were fishing here,
Thomas Joynt's wife fell downstairs and broke her leg, and they fetched
him to her--he'd got it set before they'd got the reg'lar doctor out
from Barthorpe yonder.”

Bryce had now got all the information he wanted, and he made the old
parish clerk a small present and turned to go. But another question
presented itself to his mind and he reentered the little shop.

“Your late vicar?” he said. “The one in whose family Miss Bewery was
governess--where is he now? Dead?”

“Can't say whether he's dead or alive, sir,” replied Claybourne.
“He left this parish for another--a living in a different part of
England--some years since, and I haven't heard much of him from that
time to this--he never came back here once, not even to pay us a
friendly visit--he was a queerish sort. But I'll tell you what, sir,”
 he added, evidently anxious to give his visitor good value for his
half-crown, “our present vicar has one of those books with the names
of all the clergymen in 'em, and he'd tell you where his predecessor is
now, if he's alive--name of Reverend Thomas Gilwaters, M.A.--an Oxford
college man he was, and very high learned.”

Bryce went back to the vicarage, returned the borrowed book, and asked
to look at the registers for the year 1891. He verified his copy and
turned to the vicar.

“I accidentally came across the record of a marriage there in which I'm
interested,” he said as he paid the search fees. “Celebrated by your
predecessor, Mr. Gilwaters. I should be glad to know where Mr. Gilwaters
is to be found. Do you happen to possess a clerical directory?”

The vicar produced a “Crockford”, and Bryce turned over its pages. Mr.
Gilwaters, who from the account there given appeared to be an elderly
man who had now retired, lived in London, in Bayswater, and Bryce made a
note of his address and prepared to depart.

“Find any names that interested you?” asked the vicar as his caller
left. “Anything noteworthy?”

“I found two or three names which interested me immensely,” answered
Bryce from the foot of the vicarage steps. “They were well worth
searching for.”

And without further explanation he marched off to Barthorpe duly
followed by his shadow, who saw him safely into the Peacock an hour
later--and, an hour after that, went to the police superintendent with
his report.

“Gone, sir,” he said. “Left by the five-thirty express for London.”


CHAPTER IX. THE HOUSE OF HIS FRIEND


Bryce found himself at eleven o'clock next morning in a small book-lined
parlour in a little house which stood in a quiet street in the
neighbourhood of Westbourne Grove. Over the mantelpiece, amongst other
odds and ends of pictures and photographs, hung a water-colour drawing
of Braden Medworth--and to him presently entered an old, silver-haired
clergyman whom he at once took to be Braden Medworth's former vicar,
and who glanced inquisitively at his visitor and then at the card which
Bryce had sent in with a request for an interview.

“Dr. Bryce?” he said inquiringly. “Dr. Pemberton Bryce?”

Bryce made his best bow and assumed his suavest and most ingratiating
manner.

“I hope I am not intruding on your time, Mr. Gilwaters?” he said. “The
fact is, I was referred to you, yesterday, by the present vicar of
Braden Medworth--both he, and the sexton there, Claybourne, whom you, of
course, remember, thought you would be able to give me some information
on a subject which is of great importance--to me.”

“I don't know the present vicar,” remarked Mr. Gilwaters, motioning
Bryce to a chair, and taking another close by. “Clayborne, of course,
I remember very well indeed--he must be getting an old man now--like
myself! What is it you want to know, now?”

“I shall have to take you into my confidence,” replied Bryce, who had
carefully laid his plans and prepared his story, “and you, I am sure,
Mr. Gilwaters, will respect mine. I have for two years been in practice
at Wrychester, and have there made the acquaintance of a young lady whom
I earnestly desire to marry. She is the ward of the man to whom I have
been assistant. And I think you will begin to see why I have come to you
when I say that this young lady's name is--Mary Bewery.”

The old clergyman started, and looked at his visitor with unusual
interest. He grasped the arm of his elbow chair and leaned forward.

“Mary Bewery!” he said in a low whisper. “What--what is the name of the
man who is her--guardian?”

“Dr. Mark Ransford,” answered Bryce promptly.

The old man sat upright again, with a little toss of his head.

“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed. “Mark Ransford! Then--it must have been
as I feared--and suspected!”

Bryce made no remark. He knew at once that he had struck on something,
and it was his method to let people take their own time. Mr. Gilwaters
had already fallen into something closely resembling a reverie: Bryce
sat silently waiting and expectant. And at last the old man leaned
forward again, almost eagerly.

“What is it you want to know?” he asked, repeating his first question.
“Is--is there some--some mystery?”

“Yes!” replied Bryce. “A mystery that I want to solve, sir. And I dare
say that you can help me, if you'll be so good. I am convinced--in fact,
I know!--that this young lady is in ignorance of her parentage, that
Ransford is keeping some fact, some truth back from her--and I want to
find things out. By the merest chance--accident, in fact--I discovered
yesterday at Braden Medworth that some twenty-two years ago you married
one Mary Bewery, who, I learnt there, was your governess, to a John
Brake, and that Mark Ransford was John Brake's best man and a witness
of the marriage. Now, Mr. Gilwaters, the similarity in names is too
striking to be devoid of significance. So--it's of the utmost importance
to me!--can or will you tell me--who was the Mary Bewery you married to
John Brake? Who was John Brake? And what was Mark Ransford to either, or
to both?”

He was wondering, all the time during which he reeled off these
questions, if Mr. Gilwaters was wholly ignorant of the recent affair
at Wrychester. He might be--a glance round his book-filled room had
suggested to Bryce that he was much more likely to be a bookworm than a
newspaper reader, and it was quite possible that the events of the day
had small interest for him. And his first words in reply to Bryce's
questions convinced Bryce that his surmise was correct and that the
old man had read nothing of the Wrychester Paradise mystery, in which
Ransford's name had, of course, figured as a witness at the inquest.

“It is nearly twenty years since I heard any of their names,” remarked
Mr. Gilwaters. “Nearly twenty years--a long time! But, of course, I can
answer you. Mary Bewery was our governess at Braden Medworth. She came
to us when she was nineteen--she was married four years later. She was a
girl who had no friends or relatives--she had been educated at a school
in the North--I engaged her from that school, where, I understood, she
had lived since infancy. Now then, as to Brake and Ransford. They were
two young men from London, who used to come fishing in Leicestershire.
Ransford was a few years the younger--he was either a medical student in
his last year, or he was an assistant somewhere in London. Brake--was a
bank manager in London--of a branch of one of the big banks. They
were pleasant young fellows, and I used to ask them to the vicarage.
Eventually, Mary Bewery and John Brake became engaged to be married. My
wife and I were a good deal surprised--we had believed, somehow, that
the favoured man would be Ransford. However, it was Brake--and Brake she
married, and, as you say, Ransford was best man. Of course, Brake took
his wife off to London--and from the day of her wedding, I never saw her
again.”

“Did you ever see Brake again?” asked Bryce. The old clergyman shook his
head.

“Yes!” he said sadly. “I did see Brake again--under grievous, grievous
circumstances!”

“You won't mind telling me what circumstances?” suggested Bryce. “I will
keep your confidence, Mr. Gilwaters.”

“There is really no secret in it--if it comes to that,” answered the old
man. “I saw John Brake again just once. In a prison cell!”

“A prison cell!” exclaimed Bryce. “And he--a prisoner?”

“He had just been sentenced to ten years' penal servitude,” replied Mr.
Gilwaters. “I had heard the sentence--I was present. I got leave to see
him. Ten years' penal servitude!--a terrible punishment. He must have
been released long ago--but I never heard more.”

Bryce reflected in silence for a moment--reckoning and calculating.

“When was this--the trial?” he asked.

“It was five years after the marriage--seventeen years ago,” replied Mr.
Gilwaters.

“And--what had he been doing?” inquired Bryce.

“Stealing the bank's money,” answered the old man. “I forget what the
technical offence was--embezzlement, or something of that sort. There
was not much evidence came out, for it was impossible to offer any
defence, and he pleaded guilty. But I gathered from what I heard that
something of this sort occurred. Brake was a branch manager. He was, as
it were, pounced upon one morning by an inspector, who found that his
cash was short by two or three thousand pounds. The bank people seemed
to have been unusually strict and even severe--Brake, it was said, had
some explanation, but it was swept aside and he was given in charge. And
the sentence was as I said just now--a very savage one, I thought.
But there had recently been some bad cases of that sort in the banking
world, and I suppose the judge felt that he must make an example. Yes--a
most trying affair!--I have a report of the case somewhere, which I cut
out of a London newspaper at the time.”

Mr. Gilwaters rose and turned to an old desk in the corner of his
room, and after some rummaging of papers in a drawer, produced a
newspaper-cutting book and traced an insertion in its pages. He handed
the book to his visitor.

“There is the account,” he said. “You can read it for yourself. You will
notice that in what Brake's counsel said on his behalf there are one or
two curious and mysterious hints as to what might have been said if it
had been of any use or advantage to say it. A strange case!”

Bryce turned eagerly to the faded scrap of newspaper.


              BANK MANAGER'S DEFALCATION.

  At the Central Criminal Court yesterday, John Brake,
  thirty-three, formerly manager of the Upper Tooting
  branch of the London & Home Counties Bank, Ltd.,
  pleaded guilty to embezzling certain sums, the
  property of his employers.

  Mr. Walkinshaw, Q.C., addressing the court on behalf
  of the prisoner, said that while it was impossible
  for his client to offer any defence, there were
  circumstances in the case which, if it had been worth
  while to put them in evidence, would have shown that
  the prisoner was a wronged and deceived man.  To use
  a Scriptural phrase, Brake had been wounded in the
  house of his friend.  The man who was really guilty
  in this affair had cleverly escaped all consequences,
  nor would it be of the least use to enter into any
  details respecting him.  Not one penny of the money
  in question had been used by the prisoner for his own
  purposes.  It was doubtless a wrong and improper thing
  that his client had done, and he had pleaded guilty and
  would submit to the consequences.  But if everything in
  connection with the case could have been told, if it
  would have served any useful purpose to tell it, it
  would have been seen that what the prisoner really was
  guilty of was a foolish and serious error of judgment.
  He himself, concluded the learned counsel, would go so
  far as to say that, knowing what he did, knowing what
  had been told him by his client in strict confidence,
  the prisoner, though technically guilty, was morally
  innocent.

  His Lordship, merely remarking that no excuse of any
  sort could be offered in a case of this sort, sentenced
  the prisoner to ten years' penal servitude.

Bryce read this over twice before handing back the book.

“Very strange and mysterious, Mr. Gilwaters,” he remarked. “You say that
you saw Brake after the case was over. Did you learn anything?”

“Nothing whatever!” answered the old clergyman. “I got permission to see
him before he was taken away. He did not seem particularly pleased or
disposed to see me. I begged him to tell me what the real truth was. He
was, I think, somewhat dazed by the sentence--but he was also sullen
and morose. I asked him where his wife and two children--one, a mere
infant--were. For I had already been to his private address and
had found that Mrs. Brake had sold all the furniture and
disappeared--completely. No one--thereabouts, at any rate--knew where
she was, or would tell me anything. On my asking this, he refused to
answer. I pressed him--he said finally that he was only speaking the
truth when he replied that he did not know where his wife was. I said I
must find her. He forbade me to make any attempt. Then I begged him
to tell me if she was with friends. I remember very well what he
replied.--'I'm not going to say one word more to any man living,
Mr. Gilwaters,' he answered determinedly. 'I shall be dead to the
world--only because I've been a trusting fool!--for ten years or
thereabouts, but, when I come back to it, I'll let the world see what
revenge means! Go away!' he concluded. 'I won't say one word more.'
And--I left him.”

“And--you made no more inquiries?--about the wife?” asked Bryce.

“I did what I could,” replied Mr. Gilwaters. “I made some inquiry in
the neighbourhood in which they had lived. All I could discover was
that Mrs. Brake had disappeared under extraordinarily mysterious
circumstances. There was no trace whatever of her. And I speedily found
that things were being said--the usual cruel suspicions, you know.”

“Such as--what?” asked Bryce.

“That the amount of the defalcations was much larger than had been
allowed to appear,” replied Mr. Gilwaters. “That Brake was a very clever
rogue who had got the money safely planted somewhere abroad, and that
his wife had gone off somewhere--Australia, or Canada, or some other
far-off region--to await his release. Of course, I didn't believe
one word of all that. But there was the fact--she had vanished! And
eventually, I thought of Ransford, as having been Brake's great friend,
so I tried to find him. And then I found that he, too, who up to
that time had been practising in a London suburb--Streatham--had also
disappeared. Just after Brake's arrest, Ransford had suddenly sold his
practice and gone--no one knew where, but it was believed--abroad. I
couldn't trace him, anyway. And soon after that I had a long illness,
and for two or three years was an invalid, and--well, the thing was over
and done with, and, as I said just now, I have never heard anything of
any of them for all these years. And now!--now you tell me that there
is a Mary Bewery who is a ward of a Dr. Mark Ransford at--where did you
say?”

“At Wrychester,” answered Bryce. “She is a young woman of twenty, and
she has a brother, Richard, who is between seventeen and eighteen.”

“Without a doubt those are Brake's children!” exclaimed the old man.
“The infant I spoke of was a boy. Bless me!--how extraordinary. How long
have they been at Wrychester?”

“Ransford has been in practice there some years--a few years,” replied
Bryce. “These two young people joined him there definitely two years
ago. But from what I have learnt, he has acted as their guardian ever
since they were mere children.”

“And--their mother?” asked Mr. Gilwaters.

“Said to be dead--long since,” answered Bryce. “And their father,
too. They know nothing. Ransford won't tell them anything. But, as you
say--I've no doubt of it myself now--they must be the children of John
Brake.”

“And have taken the name of their mother!” remarked the old man.

“Had it given to them,” said Bryce. “They don't know that it isn't
their real name. Of course, Ransford has given it to them! But now--the
mother?”

“Ah, yes, the mother!” said Mr. Gilwaters. “Our old governess! Dear me!”

“I'm going to put a question to you,” continued Bryce, leaning nearer
and speaking in a low, confidential tone. “You must have seen much of
the world, Mr. Gilwaters--men of your profession know the world, and
human nature, too. Call to mind all the mysterious circumstances, the
veiled hints, of that trial. Do you think--have you ever thought--that
the false friend whom the counsel referred to was--Ransford? Come, now!”

The old clergyman lifted his hands and let them fall on his knees.

“I do not know what to say!” he exclaimed. “To tell you the truth, I
have often wondered if--if that was what really did happen. There is the
fact that Brake's wife disappeared mysteriously--that Ransford made a
similar mysterious disappearance about the same time--that Brake was
obviously suffering from intense and bitter hatred when I saw him after
the trial--hatred of some person on whom he meant to be revenged--and
that his counsel hinted that he had been deceived and betrayed by
a friend. Now, to my knowledge, he and Ransford were the closest of
friends--in the old days, before Brake married our governess. And I
suppose the friendship continued--certainly Ransford acted as best man
at the wedding! But how account for that strange double disappearance?”

Bryce had already accounted for that, in his own secret mind. And now,
having got all that he wanted out of the old clergyman, he rose to take
his leave.

“You will regard this interview as having been of a strictly private
nature, Mr. Gilwaters?” he said.

“Certainly!” responded the old man. “But--you mentioned that you wished
to marry the daughter? Now that you know about her father's past--for I
am sure she must be John Brake's child--you won't allow that to--eh?”

“Not for a moment!” answered Bryce, with a fair show of magnanimity.
“I am not a man of that complexion, sir. No!--I only wished to clear up
certain things, you understand.”

“And--since she is apparently--from what you say--in ignorance of her
real father's past--what then?” asked Mr. Gilwaters anxiously. “Shall
you--”

“I shall do nothing whatever in any haste,” replied Bryce. “Rely upon me
to consider her feelings in everything. As you have been so kind, I will
let you know, later, how matters go.”

This was one of Pemberton Bryce's ready inventions. He had not the least
intention of ever seeing or communicating with the late vicar of Braden
Medworth again; Mr. Gilwaters had served his purpose for the time being.
He went away from Bayswater, and, an hour later, from London, highly
satisfied. In his opinion, Mark Ransford, seventeen years before, had
taken advantage of his friend's misfortunes to run away with his wife,
and when Brake, alias Braden, had unexpectedly turned up at Wrychester,
he had added to his former wrong by the commission of a far greater one.


CHAPTER X. DIPLOMACY


Bryce went back to Wrychester firmly convinced that Mark Ransford had
killed John Braden. He reckoned things up in his own fashion. Some
years must have elapsed since Braden, or rather Brake's release. He had
probably heard, on his release, that Ransford and his, Brake's, wife had
gone abroad--in that case he would certainly follow them. He might have
lost all trace of them; he might have lost his original interest in his
first schemes of revenge; he might have begun a new life for himself in
Australia, whence he had undoubtedly come to England recently. But
he had come, at last, and he had evidently tracked Ransford to
Wrychester--why, otherwise, had he presented himself at Ransford's door
on that eventful morning which was to witness his death? Nothing, in
Bryce's opinion, could be clearer. Brake had turned up. He and Ransford
had met--most likely in the precincts of the Cathedral. Ransford, who
knew all the quiet corners of the old place, had in all probability
induced Brake to walk up into the gallery with him, had noticed the
open doorway, had thrown Brake through it. All the facts pointed to
that conclusion--it was a theory which, so far as Bryce could see, was
perfect. It ought to be enough--proved--to put Ransford in a criminal
dock. Bryce resolved it in his own mind over and over again as he sped
home to Wrychester--he pictured the police listening greedily to all
that he could tell them if he liked. There was only one factor in the
whole sum of the affair which seemed against him--the advertisement in
the Times. If Brake desired to find Ransford in order to be revenged on
him, why did he insert that advertisement, as if he were longing to meet
a cherished friend again? But Bryce gaily surmounted that obstacle--full
of shifts and subtleties himself, he was ever ready to credit others
with trading in them, and he put the advertisement down as a clever ruse
to attract, not Ransford, but some person who could give information
about Ransford. Whatever its exact meaning might have been, its
existence made no difference to Bryce's firm opinion that it was Mark
Ransford who flung John Brake down St. Wrytha's Stair and killed him. He
was as sure of that as he was certain that Braden was Brake. And he was
not going to tell the police of his discoveries--he was not going to
tell anybody. The one thing that concerned him was--how best to make
use of his knowledge with a view to bringing about a marriage between
himself and Mark Ransford's ward. He had set his mind on that for twelve
months past, and he was not a man to be baulked of his purpose. By
fair means, or foul--he himself ignored the last word and would have
substituted the term skilful for it--Pemberton Bryce meant to have Mary
Bewery.

Mary Bewery herself had no thought of Bryce in her head when, the
morning after that worthy's return to Wrychester, she set out, alone,
for the Wrychester Golf Club. It was her habit to go there almost every
day, and Bryce was well acquainted with her movements and knew precisely
where to waylay her. And empty of Bryce though her mind was, she was not
surprised when, at a lonely place on Wrychester Common, Bryce turned the
corner of a spinny and met her face to face.

Mary would have passed on with no more than a silent recognition--she
had made up her mind to have no further speech with her guardian's
dismissed assistant. But she had to pass through a wicket gate at that
point, and Bryce barred the way, with unmistakable purpose. It was plain
to the girl that he had laid in wait for her. She was not without a
temper of her own, and she suddenly let it out on the offender.

“Do you call this manly conduct, Dr. Bryce?” she demanded, turning an
indignant and flushed face on him. “To waylay me here, when you know
that I don't want to have anything more to do with you. Let me through,
please--and go away!”

But Bryce kept a hand on the little gate, and when he spoke there was
that in his voice which made the girl listen in spite of herself.

“I'm not here on my own behalf,” he said quickly. “I give you my word
I won't say a thing that need offend you. It's true I waited here for
you--it's the only place in which I thought I could meet you, alone.
I want to speak to you. It's this--do you know your guardian is in
danger?”

Bryce had the gift of plausibility--he could convince people, against
their instincts, even against their wills, that he was telling the
truth. And Mary, after a swift glance, believed him.

“What danger?” she asked. “And if he is, and if you know he is--why
don't you go direct to him?”

“The most fatal thing in the world to do!” exclaimed Bryce. “You know
him--he can be nasty. That would bring matters to a crisis. And that, in
his interest, is just what mustn't happen.”

“I don't understand you,” said Mary.

Bryce leaned nearer to her--across the gate.

“You know what happened last week,” he said in a low voice. “The strange
death of that man--Braden.”

“Well?” she asked, with a sudden look of uneasiness. “What of it?”

“It's being rumoured--whispered--in the town that Dr. Ransford
had something to do with that affair,” answered Bryce.
“Unpleasant--unfortunate--but it's a fact.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed Mary with a heightening colour. “What could
he have to do with it? What could give rise to such
foolish--wicked--rumours?”

“You know as well as I do how people talk, how they will talk,” said
Bryce. “You can't stop them, in a place like Wrychester, where everybody
knows everybody. There's a mystery around Braden's death--it's no use
denying it. Nobody knows who he was, where he came from, why he came.
And it's being hinted--I'm only telling you what I've gathered--that
Dr. Ransford knows more than he's ever told. There are, I'm afraid,
grounds.”

“What grounds?” demanded Mary. While Bryce had been speaking, in his
usual slow, careful fashion, she had been reflecting--and remembering
Ransford's evident agitation at the time of the Paradise affair--and his
relief when the inquest was over--and his sending her with flowers to
the dead man's grave and she began to experience a sense of uneasiness
and even of fear. “What grounds can there be?” she added. “Dr. Ransford
didn't know that man--had never seen him!”

“That's not certain,” replied Bryce. “It's said--remember, I'm only
repeating things--it's said that just before the body was discovered,
Dr. Ransford was seen--seen, mind you!--leaving the west porch of the
Cathedral, looking as if he had just been very much upset. Two persons
saw this.”

“Who are they?” asked Mary.

“That I'm not allowed to tell you,” said Bryce, who had no intention of
informing her that one person was himself and the other imaginary. “But
I can assure you that I am certain--absolutely certain!--that their
story is true. The fact is--I can corroborate it.”

“You!” she exclaimed.

“I!” replied Bryce. “I will tell you something that I have never told
anybody--up to now. I shan't ask you to respect my confidence--I've
sufficient trust in you to know that you will, without any asking.
Listen!--on that morning, Dr. Ransford went out of the surgery in the
direction of the Deanery, leaving me alone there. A few minutes later, a
tap came at the door. I opened it--and found--a man standing outside!”

“Not--that man?” asked Mary fearfully.

“That man--Braden,” replied Bryce. “He asked for Dr. Ransford. I said
he was out--would the caller leave his name? He said no--he had called
because he had once known a Dr. Ransford, years before. He added
something about calling again, and he went away--across the Close
towards the Cathedral. I saw him again--not very long afterwards--lying
in the corner of Paradise--dead!”

Mary Bewery was by this time pale and trembling--and Bryce continued to
watch her steadily. She stole a furtive look at him.

“Why didn't you tell all this at the inquest?” she asked in a whisper.

“Because I knew how damning it would be to--Ransford,” replied Bryce
promptly. “It would have excited suspicion. I was certain that no one
but myself knew that Braden had been to the surgery door--therefore, I
thought that if I kept silence, his calling there would never be known.
But--I have since found that I was mistaken. Braden was seen--going away
from Dr. Ransford's.”

“By--whom?” asked Mary.

“Mrs. Deramore--at the next house,” answered Bryce. “She happened to
be looking out of an upstairs window. She saw him go away and cross the
Close.”

“Did she tell you that?” demanded Mary, who knew Mrs. Deramore for a
gossip.

“Between ourselves,” said Bryce, “she did not! She told Mrs.
Folliot--Mrs. Folliot told me.”

“So--it is talked about!” exclaimed Mary.

“I said so,” assented Bryce. “You know what Mrs. Folliot's tongue is.”

“Then Dr. Ransford will get to hear of it,” said Mary.

“He will be the last person to get to hear of it,” affirmed Bryce.
“These things are talked of, hole-and-corner fashion, a long time before
they reach the ears of the person chiefly concerned.”

Mary hesitated a moment before she asked her next question.

“Why have you told me all this?” she demanded at last.

“Because I didn't want you to be suddenly surprised,” answered Bryce.
“This--whatever it is--may come to a sudden head--of an unpleasant sort.
These rumours spread--and the police are still keen about finding out
things concerning this dead man. If they once get it into their heads
that Dr. Ransford knew him--”

Mary laid her hand on the gate between them--and Bryce, who had done
all he wished to do at that time, instantly opened it, and she passed
through.

“I am much obliged to you,” she said. “I don't know what it all
means--but it is Dr. Ransford's affair--if there is any affair, which I
doubt. Will you let me go now, please?”

Bryce stood aside and lifted his hat, and Mary, with no more than a nod,
walked on towards the golf club-house across the Common, while Bryce
turned off to the town, highly elated with his morning's work. He had
sown the seeds of uneasiness and suspicion broadcast--some of them, he
knew, would mature.

Mary Bewery played no golf that morning. In fact, she only went on to
the club-house to rid herself of Bryce, and presently she returned home,
thinking. And indeed, she said to herself, she had abundant food for
thought. Naturally candid and honest, she did not at that moment doubt
Bryce's good faith; much as she disliked him in most ways she knew that
he had certain commendable qualities, and she was inclined to believe
him when he said that he had kept silence in order to ward off
consequences which might indirectly be unpleasant for her. But of him
and his news she thought little--what occupied her mind was the possible
connection between the stranger who had come so suddenly and disappeared
so suddenly--and for ever!--and Mark Ransford. Was it possible--really
possible--that there had been some meeting between them in or about the
Cathedral precincts that morning? She knew, after a moment's reflection,
that it was very possible--why not? And from that her thoughts followed
a natural trend--was the mystery surrounding this man connected in any
way with the mystery about herself and her brother?--that mystery
of which (as it seemed to her) Ransford was so shy of speaking. And
again--and for the hundredth time--she asked herself why he was so
reticent, so evidently full of dislike of the subject, why he could not
tell her and Dick whatever there was to tell, once for all?

She had to pass the Folliots' house in the far corner of the Close on
her way home--a fine old mansion set in well-wooded grounds, enclosed by
a high wall of old red brick. A door in that wall stood open, and inside
it, talking to one of his gardeners, was Mr. Folliot--the vistas behind
him were gay with flowers and rich with the roses which he passed all
his days in cultivating. He caught sight of Mary as she passed the open
doorway and called her back.

“Come in and have a look at some new roses I've got,” he said.
“Beauties! I'll give you a handful to carry home.”

Mary rather liked Mr. Folliot. He was a big, half-asleep sort of man,
who had few words and could talk about little else than his hobby. But
he was a passionate lover of flowers and plants, and had a positive
genius for rose-culture, and was at all times highly delighted to take
flower-lovers round his garden. She turned at once and walked in, and
Folliot led her away down the scented paths.

“It's an experiment I've been trying,” he said, leading her up to a
cluster of blooms of a colour and size which she had never seen before.
“What do you think of the results?”

“Magnificent!” exclaimed Mary. “I never saw anything so fine!”

“No!” agreed Folliot, with a quiet chuckle. “Nor anybody else--because
there's no such rose in England. I shall have to go to some of these
learned parsons in the Close to invent me a Latin name for this--it's
the result of careful experiments in grafting--took me three years to
get at it. And see how it blooms,--scores on one standard.”

He pulled out a knife and began to select a handful of the finest
blooms, which he presently pressed into Mary's hand.

“By the by,” he remarked as she thanked him and they turned away along
the path, “I wanted to have a word with you--or with Ransford. Do you
know--does he know--that that confounded silly woman who lives near
to your house--Mrs. Deramore--has been saying some things--or a
thing--which--to put it plainly--might make some unpleasantness for
him?”

Mary kept a firm hand on her wits--and gave him an answer which was true
enough, so far as she was aware.

“I'm sure he knows nothing,” she said. “What is it, Mr. Folliot?”

“Why, you know what happened last week,” continued Folliot, glancing
knowingly at her. “The accident to that stranger. This Mrs. Deramore,
who's nothing but an old chatterer, has been saying, here and there,
that it's a very queer thing Dr. Ransford doesn't know anything about
him, and can't say anything, for she herself, she says, saw the very man
going away from Dr. Ransford's house not so long before the accident.”

“I am not aware that he ever called at Dr. Ransford's,” said Mary. “I
never saw him--and I was in the garden, about that very time, with your
stepson, Mr. Folliot.”

“So Sackville told me,” remarked Folliot. “He was present--and so was
I--when Mrs. Deramore was tattling about it in our house yesterday. He
said, then, that he'd never seen the man go to your house. You never
heard your servants make any remark about it?”

“Never!” answered Mary.

“I told Mrs. Deramore she'd far better hold her tongue,” continued
Folliot. “Tittle-tattle of that sort is apt to lead to unpleasantness.
And when it came to it, it turned out that all she had seen was this
stranger strolling across the Close as if he'd just left your house.
If--there's always some if! But I'll tell you why I mentioned it to
you,” he continued, nudging Mary's elbow and glancing covertly first at
her and then at his house on the far side of the garden. “Ladies that
are--getting on a bit in years, you know--like my wife, are apt to let
their tongues wag, and between you and me, I shouldn't wonder if Mrs.
Folliot has repeated what Mrs. Deramore said--eh? And I don't want the
doctor to think that--if he hears anything, you know, which he may, and,
again, he might--to think that it originated here. So, if he should ever
mention it to you, you can say it sprang from his next-door neighbour.
Bah!--they're a lot of old gossips, these Close ladies!”

“Thank you,” said Mary. “But--supposing this man had been to our
house--what difference would that make? He might have been for half a
dozen reasons.”

Folliot looked at her out of his half-shut eyes.

“Some people would want to know why Ransford didn't tell that--at the
inquest,” he answered. “That's all. When there's a bit of mystery, you
know--eh?”

He nodded--as if reassuringly--and went off to rejoin his gardener, and
Mary walked home with her roses, more thoughtful than ever. Mystery?--a
bit of mystery? There was a vast and heavy cloud of mystery, and she
knew she could have no peace until it was lifted.


CHAPTER XI. THE BACK ROOM


In the midst of all her perplexity at that moment, Mary Bewery was
certain of one fact about which she had no perplexity nor any doubt--it
would not be long before the rumours of which Bryce and Mr. Folliot had
spoken. Although she had only lived in Wrychester a comparatively short
time she had seen and learned enough of it to know that the place was a
hotbed of gossip. Once gossip was started there, it spread, widening in
circle after circle. And though Bryce was probably right when he said
that the person chiefly concerned was usually the last person to hear
what was being whispered, she knew well enough that sooner or later this
talk about Ransford would come to Ransford's own ears. But she had no
idea that it was to come so soon, nor from her own brother.

Lunch in the Ransford menage was an informal meal. At a quarter past one
every day, it was on the table--a cold lunch to which the three members
of the household helped themselves as they liked, independent of the
services of servants. Sometimes all three were there at the same moment;
sometimes Ransford was half an hour late; the one member who was always
there to the moment was Dick Bewery, who fortified himself sedulously
after his morning's school labours. On this particular day all three met
in the dining-room at once, and sat down together. And before Dick had
eaten many mouthfuls of a cold pie to which he had just liberally helped
himself he bent confidentially across the table towards his guardian.

“There's something I think you ought to be told about, sir,” he remarked
with a side-glance at Mary. “Something I heard this morning at school.
You know, we've a lot of fellows--town boys--who talk.”

“I daresay,” responded Ransford dryly. “Following the example of their
mothers, no doubt. Well--what is it?”

He, too, glanced at Mary--and the girl had her work set to look
unconscious.

“It's this,” replied Dick, lowering his voice in spite of the fact
that all three were alone. “They're saying in the town that you know
something which you won't tell about that affair last week. It's being
talked of.”

Ransford laughed--a little cynically.

“Are you quite sure, my boy, that they aren't saying that I daren't
tell?” he asked. “Daren't is a much more likely word than won't, I
think.”

“Well--about that, sir,” acknowledged Dick. “Comes to that, anyhow.”

“And what are their grounds?” inquired Ransford. “You've heard them,
I'll be bound!”

“They say that man--Braden--had been here--here, to the house!--that
morning, not long before he was found dead,” answered Dick. “Of course,
I said that was all bosh!--I said that if he'd been here and seen you,
I'd have heard of it, dead certain.”

“That's not quite so dead certain, Dick, as that I have no knowledge of
his ever having been here,” said Ransford. “But who says he came here?”

“Mrs. Deramore,” replied Dick promptly. “She says she saw him go
away from the house and across the Close, a little before ten. So Jim
Deramore says, anyway--and he says his mother's eyes are as good as
another's.”

“Doubtless!” assented Ransford. He looked at Mary again, and saw that
she was keeping hers fixed on her plate. “Well,” he continued, “if it
will give you any satisfaction, Dick, you can tell the gossips that Dr.
Ransford never saw any man, Braden or anybody else, at his house that
morning, and that he never exchanged a word with Braden. So much for
that! But,” he added, “you needn't expect them to believe you. I know
these people--if they've got an idea into their heads they'll ride it to
death. Nevertheless, what I say is a fact.”

Dick presently went off--and once more Ransford looked at Mary. And this
time, Mary had to meet her guardian's inquiring glance.

“Have you heard anything of this?” he asked.

“That there was a rumour--yes,” she replied without hesitation.
“But--not until just now--this morning.”

“Who told you of it?” inquired Ransford.

Mary hesitated. Then she remembered that Mr. Folliot, at any rate, had
not bound her to secrecy.

“Mr. Folliot,” she replied. “He called me into his garden, to give me
those roses, and he mentioned that Mrs. Deramore had said these things
to Mrs. Folliot, and as he seemed to think it highly probable that Mrs.
Folliot would repeat them, he told me because he didn't want you to
think that the rumour had originally arisen at his house.”

“Very good of him, I'm sure,” remarked Ransford dryly. “They all like to
shift the blame from one to another! But,” he added, looking searchingly
at her, “you don't know anything about--Braden's having come here?”

He saw at once that she did, and Mary saw a slight shade of anxiety come
over his face.

“Yes, I do!” she replied. “That morning. But--it was told to me, only
today, in strict confidence.”

“In strict confidence!” he repeated. “May I know--by whom?”

“Dr. Bryce,” she answered. “I met him this morning. And I think you
ought to know. Only--it was in confidence.” She paused for a moment,
looking at him, and her face grew troubled. “I hate to suggest it,”
 she continued, “but--will you come with me to see him, and I'll
ask him--things being as they are--to tell you what he told me. I
can't--without his permission.”

Ransford shook his head and frowned.

“I dislike it!” he said. “It's--it's putting ourselves in his power,
as it were. But--I'm not going to be left in the dark. Put on your hat,
then.”

Bryce, ever since his coming to Wrychester, had occupied rooms in an
old house in Friary Lane, at the back of the Close. He was comfortably
lodged. Downstairs he had a double sitting-room, extending from the
front to the back of the house; his front window looked out on one
garden, his back window on another. He had just finished lunch in the
front part of his room, and was looking out of his window, wondering
what to do with himself that afternoon, when he saw Ransford and Mary
Bewery approaching. He guessed the reason of their visit at once,
and went straight to the front door to meet them, and without a word
motioned them to follow him into his own quarters. It was characteristic
of him that he took the first word--before either of his visitors could
speak.

“I know why you've come,” he said, as he closed the door and glanced at
Mary. “You either want my permission that you should tell Dr. Ransford
what I told you this morning, or, you want me to tell him myself. Am I
right?”

“I should be glad if you would tell him,” replied Mary. “The rumour you
spoke of has reached him--he ought to know what you can tell. I have
respected your confidence, so far.”

The two men looked at each other. And this time it was Ransford who
spoke first.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that there is no great reason for privacy.
If rumours are flying about in Wrychester, there is an end of privacy.
Dick tells me they are saying at the school that it is known that
Braden called on me at my house shortly before he was found dead. I know
nothing whatever of any such call! But--I left you in my surgery that
morning. Do you know if he came there?”

“Yes!” answered Bryce. “He did come. Soon after you'd gone out.”

“Why did you keep that secret?” demanded Ransford. “You could have told
it to the police--or to the Coroner--or to me. Why didn't you?”

Before Bryce could answer, all three heard a sharp click of the front
garden gate, and looking round, saw Mitchington coming up the walk.

“Here's one of the police, now,” said Bryce calmly. “Probably come to
extract information. I would much rather he didn't see you here--but I'd
also like you to hear what I shall say to him. Step inside there,” he
continued, drawing aside the curtains which shut off the back room.
“Don't stick at trifles!--you don't know what may be afoot.”

He almost forced them away, drew the curtains again, and hurrying to the
front door, returned almost immediately with Mitchington.

“Hope I'm not disturbing you, doctor,” said the inspector, as Bryce
brought him in and again closed the door. “Not? All right, then--I came
round to ask you a question. There's a queer rumour getting out in the
town, about that affair last week. Seems to have sprung from some of
those old dowagers in the Close.”

“Of course!” said Bryce. He was mixing a whisky-and-soda for his caller,
and his laugh mingled with the splash of the siphon. “Of course! I've
heard it.”

“You've heard?” remarked Mitchington. “Um! Good health, sir!--heard, of
course, that--”

“That Braden called on Dr. Ransford not long before the accident, or
murder, or whatever it was, happened,” said Bryce. “That's it--eh?”

“Something of that sort,” agreed Mitchington. “It's being said, anyway,
that Braden was at Ransford's house, and presumably saw him, and that
Ransford, accordingly, knows something about him which he hasn't told.
Now--what do you know? Do you know if Ransford and Braden did meet that
morning?”

“Not at Ransford's house, anyway,” answered Bryce promptly. “I can prove
that. But since this rumour has got out, I'll tell you what I do know,
and what the truth is. Braden did come to Ransford's--not to the house,
but to the surgery. He didn't see Ransford--Ransford had gone out,
across the Close. Braden saw--me!”

“Bless me!--I didn't know that,” remarked Mitchington. “You never
mentioned it.”

“You'll not wonder that I didn't,” said Bryce, laughing lightly, “when I
tell you what the man wanted.”

“What did he want, then?” asked Mitchington.

“Merely to be told where the Cathedral Library was,” answered Bryce.

Ransford, watching Mary Bewery, saw her cheeks flush, and knew that
Bryce was cheerfully telling lies. But Mitchington evidently had no
suspicion.

“That all?” he asked. “Just a question?”

“Just a question--that question,” replied Bryce. “I pointed out the
Library--and he walked away. I never saw him again until I was fetched
to him--dead. And I thought so little of the matter that--well, it never
even occurred to me to mention it.”

“Then--though he did call--he never saw Ransford?” asked the inspector.

“I tell you Ransford was already gone out,” answered Bryce. “He saw no
one but myself. Where Mrs. Deramore made her mistake--I happen to know,
Mitchington, that she started this rumour--was in trying to make two
and two into five. She saw this man crossing the Close, as if from
Ransford's house and she at once imagined he'd seen and been talking
with Ransford.”

“Old fool!” said Mitchington. “Of course, that's how these tales get
about. However, there's more than that in the air.”

The two listeners behind the curtains glanced at each other. Ransford's
glance showed that he was already chafing at the unpleasantness of his
position--but Mary's only betokened apprehension. And suddenly, as if
she feared that Ransford would throw the curtains aside and walk into
the front room, she laid a hand on his arm and motioned him to be
patient--and silent.

“Oh?” said Bryce. “More in the air? About that business?”

“Just so,” assented Mitchington. “To start with, that man Varner, the
mason, has never ceased talking. They say he's always at it--to the
effect that the verdict of the jury at the inquest was all wrong, and
that his evidence was put clean aside. He persists that he did see--what
he swore he saw.”

“He'll persist in that to his dying day,” said Bryce carelessly. “If
that's all there is--”

“It isn't,” interrupted the inspector. “Not by a long chalk! But
Varner's is a direct affirmation--the other matter's a sort of ugly
hint. There's a man named Collishaw, a townsman, who's been employed
as a mason's labourer about the Cathedral of late. This Collishaw,
it seems, was at work somewhere up in the galleries, ambulatories,
or whatever they call those upper regions, on the very morning of the
affair. And the other night, being somewhat under the influence of
drink, and talking the matter over with his mates at a tavern, he let
out some dark hints that he could tell something if he liked. Of course,
he was pressed to tell them--and wouldn't. Then--so my informant tells
me--he was dared to tell, and became surlily silent. That, of course,
spread, and got to my ears. I've seen Collishaw.”

“Well?” asked Bryce.

“I believe the man does know something,” answered Mitchington. “That's
the impression I carried away, anyhow. But--he won't speak. I charged
him straight out with knowing something--but it was no good. I told him
of what I'd heard. All he would say was that whatever he might have said
when he'd got a glass of beer or so too much, he wasn't going to say
anything now neither for me nor for anybody!”

“Just so!” remarked Bryce. “But--he'll be getting a glass too much
again, some day, and then--then, perhaps he'll add to what he said
before. And--you'll be sure to hear of it.”

“I'm not certain of that,” answered Mitchington. “I made some inquiry
and I find that Collishaw is usually a very sober and retiring sort of
chap--he'd been lured on to drink when he let out what he did. Besides,
whether I'm right or wrong, I got the idea into my head that he'd
already been--squared!”

“Squared!” exclaimed Bryce. “Why, then, if that affair was really
murder, he'd be liable to being charged as an accessory after the fact!”

“I warned him of that,” replied Mitchington. “Yes, I warned him
solemnly.”

“With no effect?” asked Bryce.

“He's a surly sort of man,” said Mitchington. “The sort that takes
refuge in silence. He made no answer beyond a growl.”

“You really think he knows something?” suggested Bryce. “Well--if there
is anything, it'll come out--in time.”

“Oh, it'll come out!” assented Mitchington. “I'm by no means satisfied
with that verdict of the coroner's inquiry. I believe there was foul
play--of some sort. I'm still following things up--quietly. And--I'll
tell you something--between ourselves--I've made an important discovery.
It's this. On the evening of Braden's arrival at the Mitre he was out,
somewhere, for a whole two hours--by himself.”

“I thought we learned from Mrs. Partingley that he and the other man,
Dellingham, spent the evening together?” said Bryce.

“So we did--but that was not quite so,” replied Mitchington. “Braden
went out of the Mitre just before nine o'clock and he didn't return
until a few minutes after eleven. Now, then, where did he go?”

“I suppose you're trying to find that out?” asked Bryce, after a pause,
during which the listeners heard the caller rise and make for the door.

“Of course!” replied Mitchington, with a confident laugh. “And--I shall!
Keep it to yourself, doctor.”

When Bryce had let the inspector out and returned to his sitting-room,
Ransford and Mary had come from behind the curtains. He looked at them
and shook his head.

“You heard--a good deal, you see,” he observed.

“Look here!” said Ransford peremptorily. “You put that man off about the
call at my surgery. You didn't tell him the truth.”

“Quite right,” assented Bryce. “I didn't. Why should I?”

“What did Braden ask you?” demanded Ransford. “Come, now?”

“Merely if Dr. Ransford was in,” answered Bryce, “remarking that he had
once known a Dr. Ransford. That was--literally--all. I replied that you
were not in.”

Ransford stood silently thinking for a moment or two. Then he moved
towards the door.

“I don't see that any good will come of more talk about this,” he said.
“We three, at any rate, know this--I never saw Braden when he came to my
house.”

Then he motioned Mary to follow him, and they went away, and Bryce,
having watched them out of sight, smiled at himself in his mirror--with
full satisfaction.


CHAPTER XII. MURDER OF THE MASON'S LABOURER


It was towards noon of the very next day that Bryce made a forward step
in the matter of solving the problem of Richard Jenkins and his tomb
in Paradise. Ever since his return from Barthorpe he had been making
attempts to get at the true meaning of this mystery. He had paid so
many visits to the Cathedral Library that Ambrose Campany had asked him
jestingly if he was going in for archaeology; Bryce had replied that
having nothing to do just then he saw no reason why he shouldn't improve
his knowledge of the antiquities of Wrychester. But he was scrupulously
careful not to let the librarian know the real object of his prying and
peeping into the old books and documents. Campany, as Bryce was very
well aware, was a walking encyclopaedia of information about Wrychester
Cathedral: he was, in fact, at that time, engaged in completing a
history of it. And it was through that history that Bryce accidentally
got his precious information. For on the day following the interview
with Mary Bewery and Ransford, Bryce being in the library was treated
by Campany to an inspection of certain drawings which the librarian had
made for illustrating his work-drawings, most of them, of old brasses,
coats of arms, and the like,--And at the foot of one of these, a drawing
of a shield on which was sculptured three crows, Bryce saw the name
Richard Jenkins, armiger. It was all he could do to repress a start and
to check his tongue. But Campany, knowing nothing, quickly gave him the
information he wanted.

“All these drawings,” he said, “are of old things in and about the
Cathedral. Some of them, like that, for instance, that Jenkins shield,
are of ornamentations on tombs which are so old that the inscriptions
have completely disappeared--tombs in the Cloisters, and in Paradise.
Some of those tombs can only be identified by these sculptures and
ornaments.”

“How do you know, for instance, that any particular tomb or monument is,
we'll say, Jenkins's?” asked Bryce, feeling that he was on safe ground.
“Must be a matter of doubt if there's no inscription left, isn't it?”

“No!” replied Campany. “No doubt at all. In that particular case,
there's no doubt that a certain tomb out there in the corner of
Paradise, near the east wall of the south porch, is that of one Richard
Jenkins, because it bears his coat-of-arms, which, as you see, bore
these birds--intended either as crows or ravens. The inscription's clean
gone from that tomb--which is why it isn't particularized in that chart
of burials in Paradise--the man who prepared that chart didn't know
how to trace things as we do nowadays. Richard Jenkins was, as you may
guess, a Welshman, who settled here in Wrychester in the seventeenth
century: he left some money to St. Hedwige's Church, outside the
walls, but he was buried here. There are more instances--look at this,
now--this coat-of-arms--that's the only means there is of identifying
another tomb in Paradise--that of Gervase Tyrrwhit. You see his armorial
bearings in this drawing? Now those--”

Bryce let the librarian go on talking and explaining, and heard all he
had to say as a man hears things in a dream--what was really active in
his own mind was joy at this unexpected stroke of luck: he himself might
have searched for many a year and never found the last resting-place of
Richard Jenkins. And when, soon after the great clock of the Cathedral
had struck the hour of noon, he left Campany and quitted the Library, he
walked over to Paradise and plunged in amongst its yews and cypresses,
intent on seeing the Jenkins tomb for himself. No one could suspect
anything from merely seeing him there, and all he wanted was one glance
at the ancient monument.

But Bryce was not to give even one look at Richard Jenkins's tomb that
day, nor the next, nor for many days--death met him in another form
before he had taken many steps in the quiet enclosure where so much of
Wrychester mortality lay sleeping.

From over the topmost branches of the old yew trees a great shaft
of noontide sunlight fell full on a patch of the grey walls of the
high-roofed nave. At the foot of it, his back comfortably planted
against the angle of a projecting buttress, sat a man, evidently fast
asleep in the warmth of those powerful rays. His head leaned down and
forward over his chest, his hands were folded across his waist, his
whole attitude was that of a man who, having eaten and drunken in the
open air, has dropped off to sleep. That he had so dropped off while
in the very act of smoking was evident from the presence of a short,
well-blackened clay pipe which had fallen from his lips and lay in the
grass beside him. Near the pipe, spread on a coloured handkerchief, were
the remains of his dinner--Bryce's quick eye noticed fragments of bread,
cheese, onions. And close by stood one of those tin bottles in which
labouring men carry their drink; its cork, tied to the neck by a piece
of string, dangled against the side. A few yards away, a mass of fallen
rubbish and a shovel and wheelbarrow showed at what the sleeper had been
working when his dinner-hour and time for rest had arrived.

Something unusual, something curiously noticeable--yet he could not
exactly tell what--made Bryce go closer to the sleeping man. There was
a strange stillness about him--a rigidity which seemed to suggest
something more than sleep. And suddenly, with a stifled exclamation,
he bent forward and lifted one of the folded hands. It dropped like a
leaden weight when Bryce released it, and he pushed back the man's face
and looked searchingly into it. And in that instant he knew that for
the second time within a fortnight he had found a dead man in Wrychester
Paradise.

There was no doubt whatever that the man was dead. His hands and body
were warm enough--but there was not a flicker of breath; he was as dead
as any of the folk who lay six feet beneath the old gravestones around
him. And Bryce's practised touch and eye knew that he was only just
dead--and that he had died in his sleep. Everything there pointed
unmistakably to what had happened. The man had eaten his frugal dinner,
washed it down from his tin bottle, lighted his pipe, leaned back in the
warm sunlight, dropped asleep--and died as quietly as a child taken from
its play to its slumbers.

After one more careful look, Bryce turned and made through the trees
to the path which crossed the old graveyard. And there, going leisurely
home to lunch, was Dick Bewery, who glanced at the young doctor
inquisitively.

“Hullo!” he exclaimed with the freedom of youth towards something not
much older. “You there? Anything on?”

Then he looked more clearly, seeing Bryce to be pale and excited. Bryce
laid a hand on the lad's arm.

“Look here!” he said. “There's something wrong--again!--in here. Run
down to the police-station--get hold of Mitchington--quietly, you
understand!--bring him here at once. If he's not there, bring somebody
else--any of the police. But--say nothing to anybody but them.”

Dick gave him another swift look, turned, and ran. And Bryce went back
to the dead man--and picked up the tin bottle, and making a cup of his
left hand poured out a trickle of the contents. Cold tea!--and, as far
as he could judge, nothing else. He put the tip of his little finger
into the weak-looking stuff, and tasted--it tasted of nothing but a
super-abundance of sugar.

He stood there, watching the dead man until the sound of footsteps
behind him gave warning of the return of Dick Bewery, who, in another
minute, hurried through the bushes, followed by Mitchington. The boy
stared in silence at the still figure, but the inspector, after a hasty
glance, turned a horrified face on Bryce.

“Good Lord!” he gasped. “It's Collishaw!”

Bryce for the moment failed to comprehend this, and Mitchington shook
his head.

“Collishaw!” he repeated. “Collishaw, you know! The man I told you about
yesterday afternoon. The man that said--”

Mitchington suddenly checked himself, with a glance at Dick Bewery.

“I remember--now,” said Bryce. “The mason's labourer! So--this is the
man, eh? Well, Mitchington, he's dead!--I found him dead, just now. I
should say he'd been dead five to ten minutes--not more. You'd better
get help--and I'd like another medical man to see him before he's
removed.”

Mitchington looked again at Dick.

“Perhaps you'd fetch Dr. Ransford, Mr--Richard?” he asked. “He's
nearest.”

“Dr. Ransford's not at home,” said Dick. “He went to Highminster--some
County Council business or other--at ten this morning, and he won't be
back until four--I happen to know that. Shall I run for Dr. Coates?”

“If you wouldn't mind,” said Mitchington, “and as it's close by, drop in
at the station again and tell the sergeant to come here with a couple of
men. I say!” he went on, when the boy had hurried off, “this is a queer
business, Dr. Bryce! What do you think?”

“I think this,” answered Bryce. “That man!--look at him!--a strong,
healthy-looking fellow, in the very prime of life--that man has met his
death by foul means. You take particular care of those dinner things
of his--the remains of his dinner, every scrap--and of that tin bottle.
That, especially. Take all these things yourself, Mitchington, and lock
them up--they'll be wanted for examination.”

Mitchington glanced at the simple matters which Bryce indicated. And
suddenly he turned a half-frightened glance on his companion.

“You don't mean to say that--that you suspect he's been poisoned?” he
asked. “Good Lord, if that is so--”

“I don't think you'll find that there's much doubt about it,” answered
Bryce. “But that's a point that will soon be settled. You'd better tell
the Coroner at once, Mitchington, and he'll issue a formal order to Dr.
Coates to make a post-mortem. And,” he added significantly, “I shall be
surprised if it isn't as I say--poison!”

“If that's so,” observed Mitchington, with a grim shake of his head, “if
that really is so, then I know what I shall think! This!” he went
on, pointing to the dead man, “this is--a sort of sequel to the other
affair. There's been something in what the poor chap said--he did know
something against somebody, and that somebody's got to hear of it--and
silenced him. But, Lord, doctor, how can it have been done?”

“I can see how it can have been done, easy enough,” said Bryce. “This
man has evidently been at work here, by himself, all the morning. He of
course brought his dinner with him. He no doubt put his basket and his
bottle down somewhere, while he did his work. What easier than for some
one to approach through these trees and shrubs while the man's back was
turned, or he was busy round one of these corners, and put some deadly
poison into that bottle? Nothing!”

“Well,” remarked Mitchington, “if that's so, it proves something
else--to my mind.”

“What!” asked Bryce.

“Why, that whoever it was who did it was somebody who had a knowledge
of poison!” answered Mitchington. “And I should say there aren't many
people in Wrychester who have such knowledge outside yourselves and the
chemists. It's a black business, this!”

Bryce nodded silently. He waited until Dr. Coates, an elderly man who
was the leading practitioner in the town, arrived, and to him he gave
a careful account of his discovery. And after the police had taken the
body away, and he had accompanied Mitchington to the police-station and
seen the tin bottle and the remains of Collishaw's dinner safely locked
up, he went home to lunch, and to wonder at this strange development.
The inspector was doubtless right in saying that Collishaw had been
done to death by somebody who wanted to silence him--but who could
that somebody be? Bryce's thoughts immediately turned to the fact that
Ransford had overheard all that Mitchington had said, in that very room
in which he, Bryce, was then lunching--Ransford! Was it possible that
Ransford had realized a danger in Collishaw's knowledge, and had--

He was interrupted at this stage by Mitchington, who came hurriedly in
with a scared face.

“I say, I say!” he whispered as soon as Bryce's landlady had shut the
door on them. “Here's a fine business! I've heard something--something
I can hardly credit--but it's true. I've been to tell Collishaw's family
what's happened. And--I'm fairly dazed by it--yet it's there--it is so!”

“What's so?” demanded Bryce. “What is it that's true?”

Mitchington bent closer over the table.

“Dr. Ransford was fetched to Collishaw's cottage at six o'clock this
morning!” he said. “It seems that Collishaw's wife has been in a poor
way about her health of late, and Dr. Ransford has attended her, off and
on. She had some sort of a seizure this morning--early--and Ransford
was sent for. He was there some little time--and I've heard some queer
things.”

“What sort of queer things?” demanded Bryce. “Don't be afraid of
speaking out, man!--there's no one to hear but myself.”

“Well, things that look suspicious, on the face of it,” continued
Mitchington, who was obviously much upset. “As you'll acknowledge when
you hear them. I got my information from the next-door neighbour, Mrs.
Batts. Mrs. Batts says that when Ransford--who'd been fetched by Mrs.
Batts's eldest lad--came to Collishaw's house, Collishaw was putting up
his dinner to take to his work--”

“What on earth made Mrs. Batts tell you that?” interrupted Bryce.

“Oh, well, to tell you the truth, I put a few questions to her as to
what went on while Ransford was in the house,” answered Mitchington.
“When I'd once found that he had been there, you know, I naturally
wanted to know all I could.”

“Well?” asked Bryce.

“Collishaw, I say, was putting up his dinner to take to his work,”
 continued Mitchington. “Mrs. Batts was doing a thing or two about the
house. Ransford went upstairs to see Mrs. Collishaw. After a while he
came down and said he would have to remain a little. Collishaw went
up to speak to his wife before going out. And then Ransford asked
Mrs. Batts for something--I forget what--some small matter which the
Collishaw's hadn't got and she had, and she went next door to fetch it.
Therefore--do you see?--Ransford was left alone with--Collishaw's tin
bottle!”

Bryce, who had been listening attentively, looked steadily at the
inspector.

“You're suspecting Ransford already!” he said.

Mitchington shook his head.

“What's it look like?” he answered, almost appealingly. “I put it to
you, now!--what does it look like? Here's this man been poisoned without
a doubt--I'm certain of it. And--there were those rumours--it's idle to
deny that they centred in Ransford. And--this morning Ransford had the
chance!”

“That's arguing that Ransford purposely carried a dose of poison to
put into Collishaw's tin bottle!” said Bryce half-sneeringly. “Not very
probable, you know, Mitchington.”

Mitchington spread out his hands.

“Well, there it is!” he said. “As I say, there's no denying the
suspicious look of it. If I were only certain that those rumours about
what Collishaw hinted he could say had got to Ransford's ears!--why,
then--”

“What's being done about that post-mortem?” asked Bryce.

“Dr. Coates and Dr. Everest are going to do it this afternoon,” replied
Mitchington. “The Coroner went to them at once, as soon as I told him.”

“They'll probably have to call in an expert from London,” said Bryce.
“However, you can't do anything definite, you know, until the result's
known. Don't say anything of this to anybody. I'll drop in at your place
later and hear if Coates can say anything really certain.”

Mitchington went away, and Bryce spent the rest of the afternoon
wondering, speculating and scheming. If Ransford had really got rid of
this man who knew something--why, then, it was certainly Ransford who
killed Braden.

He went round to the police-station at five o'clock. Mitchington drew
him aside.

“Coates says there's no doubt about it!” he whispered. “Poisoned!
Hydrocyanic acid!”


CHAPTER XIII. BRYCE IS ASKED A QUESTION


Mitchington stepped aside into a private room, motioning Bryce to follow
him. He carefully closed the door, and looking significantly at his
companion, repeated his last words, with a shake of the head.

“Poisoned!--without the very least doubt,” he whispered. “Hydrocyanic
acid--which, I understand, is the same thing as what's commonly called
prussic acid. They say then hadn't the least difficulty in finding that
out! so there you are.”

“That's what Coates has told you, of course?” asked Bryce. “After the
autopsy?”

“Both of 'em told me--Coates, and Everest, who helped him,” replied
Mitchington. “They said it was obvious from the very start. And--I say!”

“Well?” said Bryce.

“It wasn't in that tin bottle, anyway,” remarked Mitchington, who was
evidently greatly weighted with mystery.

“No!--of course it wasn't!” affirmed Bryce. “Good Heavens, man--I know
that!”

“How do you know?” asked Mitchington.

“Because I poured a few drops from that bottle into my hand when I first
found Collishaw and tasted the stuff,” answered Bryce readily. “Cold
tea! with too much sugar in it. There was no H.C.N. in that besides,
wherever it is, there's always a smell stronger or fainter--of bitter
almonds. There was none about that bottle.”

“Yet you were very anxious that we should take care of the bottle?”
 observed Mitchington.

“Of course!--because I suspected the use of some much rarer poison
than that,” retorted Bryce. “Pooh!--it's a clumsy way of poisoning
anybody!--quick though it is.”

“Well, there's where it is!” said Mitchington. “That'll be the medical
evidence at the inquest, anyway. That's how it was done. And the
question now is--”

“Who did it?” interrupted Bryce. “Precisely! Well--I'll say this much
at once, Mitchington. Whoever did it was either a big bungler--or damned
clever! That's what I say!”

“I don't understand you,” said Mitchington.

“Plain enough--my meaning,” replied Bryce, smiling. “To finish anybody
with that stuff is easy enough--but no poison is more easily detected.
It's an amateurish way of poisoning anybody--unless you can do it in
such a fashion that no suspicion can attach you to. And in this case
it's here--whoever administered that poison to Collishaw must have been
certain--absolutely certain, mind you!--that it was impossible for any
one to find out that he'd done so. Therefore, I say what I said--the man
must be damned clever. Otherwise, he'd be found out pretty quick. And
all that puzzles me is--how was it administered?”

“How much would kill anybody--pretty quick?” asked Mitchington.

“How much? One drop would cause instantaneous death!” answered Bryce.
“Cause paralysis of the heart, there and then, instantly!”

Mitchington remained silent awhile, looking meditatively at Bryce. Then
he turned to a locked drawer, produced a key, and took something out of
the drawer--a small object, wrapped in paper.

“I'm telling you a good deal, doctor,” he said. “But as you know so much
already, I'll tell you a bit more. Look at this!”

He opened his hand and showed Bryce a small cardboard pill-box, across
the face of which a few words were written--One after meals--Mr.
Collishaw.

“Whose handwriting's that?” demanded Mitchington.

Bryce looked closer, and started.

“Ransford's!” he muttered. “Ransford--of course!”

“That box was in Collishaw's waistcoat pocket,” said Mitchington. “There
are pills inside it, now. See!” He took off the lid of the box and
revealed four sugar-coated pills. “It wouldn't hold more than six,
this,” he observed.

Bryce extracted a pill and put his nose to it, after scratching a little
of the sugar coating away.

“Mere digestive pills,” he announced.

“Could--it!--have been given in one of these?” asked Mitchington.

“Possible,” replied Bryce. He stood thinking for a moment. “Have you
shown those things to Coates and Everest?” he asked at last.

“Not yet,” replied Mitchington. “I wanted to find out, first, if
Ransford gave this box to Collishaw, and when. I'm going to Collishaw's
house presently--I've certain inquiries to make. His widow'll know about
these pills.”

“You're suspecting Ransford,” said Bryce. “That's certain!”

Mitchington carefully put away the pill-box and relocked the drawer.

“I've got some decidedly uncomfortable ideas--which I'd much rather not
have--about Dr. Ransford,” he said. “When one thing seems to fit into
another, what is one to think. If I were certain that that rumour which
spread, about Collishaw's knowledge of something--you know, had got to
Ransford's ears--why, I should say it looked very much as if Ransford
wanted to stop Collishaw's tongue for good before it could say more--and
next time, perhaps, something definite. If men once begin to hint that
they know something, they don't stop at hinting. Collishaw might have
spoken plainly before long--to us!”

Bryce asked a question about the holding of the inquest and went away.
And after thinking things over, he turned in the direction of the
Cathedral, and made his way through the Cloisters to the Close. He
was going to make another move in his own game, while there was a good
chance. Everything at this juncture was throwing excellent cards
into his hand--he would be foolish, he thought, not to play them to
advantage. And so he made straight for Ransford's house, and before he
reached it, met Ransford and Mary Bewery, who were crossing the Close
from another point, on their way from the railway station, whither
Mary had gone especially to meet her guardian. They were in such deep
conversation that Bryce was close upon them before they observed
his presence. When Ransford saw his late assistant, he scowled
unconsciously--Bryce, and the interview of the previous afternoon, had
been much in his thoughts all day, and he had an uneasy feeling that
Bryce was playing some game. Bryce was quick to see that scowl--and to
observe the sudden start which Mary could not repress--and he was just
as quick to speak.

“I was going to your house, Dr. Ransford,” he remarked quietly. “I don't
want to force my presence on you, now or at any time--but I think you'd
better give me a few minutes.”

They were at Ransford's garden gate by that time, and Ransford flung it
open and motioned Bryce to follow. He led the way into the dining-room,
closed the door on the three, and looked at Bryce. Bryce took the glance
as a question, and put another, in words.

“You've heard of what's happened during the day?” he said.

“About Collishaw--yes,” answered Ransford. “Miss Bewery has just told
me--what her brother told her. What of it?”

“I have just come from the police-station,” said Bryce. “Coates and
Everest have carried out an autopsy this afternoon. Mitchington told me
the result.”

“Well?” demanded Ransford, with no attempt to conceal his impatience.
“And what then?”

“Collishaw was poisoned,” replied Bryce, watching Ransford with a
closeness which Mary did not fail to observe. “H.C.N. No doubt at all
about it.”

“Well--and what then?” asked Ransford, still more impatiently. “To be
explicit--what's all this to do with me?”

“I came here to do you a service,” answered Bryce. “Whether you like
to take it or not is your look-out. You may as well know it you're in
danger. Collishaw is the man who hinted--as you heard yesterday in my
rooms--that he could say something definite about the Braden affair--if
he liked.”

“Well?” said Ransford.

“It's known--to the police--that you were at Collishaw's house early
this morning,” said Bryce. “Mitchington knows it.”

Ransford laughed.

“Does Mitchington know that I overheard what he said to you, yesterday
afternoon?” he inquired.

“No, he doesn't,” answered Bryce. “He couldn't possibly know unless
I told him. I haven't told him--I'm not going to tell him. But--he's
suspicious already.”

“Of me, of course,” suggested Ransford, with another laugh. He took a
turn across the room and suddenly faced round on Bryce, who had remained
standing near the door. “Do you really mean to tell me that Mitchington
is such a fool as to believe that I would poison a poor working man--and
in that clumsy fashion?” he burst out. “Of course you don't.”

“I never said I did,” answered Bryce. “I'm only telling you what
Mitchington thinks his grounds for suspecting. He confided in me
because--well, it was I who found Collishaw. Mitchington is in
possession of a box of digestive pills which you evidently gave
Collishaw.”

“Bah!” exclaimed Ransford. “The man's a fool! Let him come and talk to
me.”

“He won't do that--yet,” said Bryce. “But--I'm afraid he'll bring all
this out at the inquest. The fact is--he's suspicious--what with one
thing or another--about the former affair. He thinks you concealed the
truth--whatever it may be--as regards any knowledge of Braden which you
may or mayn't have.”

“I'll tell you what it is!” said Ransford suddenly. “It just comes to
this--I'm suspected of having had a hand--the hand, if you like!--in
Braden's death, and now of getting rid of Collishaw because Collishaw
could prove that I had that hand. That's about it!”

“A clear way of putting it, certainly,” assented Bryce. “But--there's a
very clear way, too, of dissipating any such ideas.”

“What way?” demanded Ransford.

“If you do know anything about the Braden affair--why not reveal it,
and be done with the whole thing,” suggested Bryce. “That would finish
matters.”

Ransford took a long, silent look at his questioner. And Bryce looked
steadily back--and Mary Bewery anxiously watched both men.

“That's my business,” said Ransford at last. “I'm neither to be
coerced, bullied, or cajoled. I'm obliged to you for giving me a hint of
my--danger, I suppose! And--I don't propose to say any more.”

“Neither do I,” said Bryce. “I only came to tell you.”

And therewith, having successfully done all that he wanted to do, he
walked out of the room and the house, and Ransford, standing in the
window, his hands thrust in his pockets, watched him go away across the
Close.

“Guardian!” said Mary softly.

Ransford turned sharply.

“Wouldn't it be best,” she continued, speaking nervously, “if--if you do
know anything about that unfortunate man--if you told it? Why have this
suspicion fastening itself on you? You!”

Ransford made an effort to calm himself. He was furiously angry--angry
with Bryce, angry with Mitchington, angry with the cloud of foolishness
and stupidity that seemed to be gathering.

“Why should I--supposing that I do know something, which I don't
admit--why should I allow myself to be coerced and frightened by these
fools?” he asked. “No man can prevent suspicion falling on him--it's my
bad luck in this instance. Why should I rush to the police-station and
say, 'Here--I'll blurt out all I know--everything!' Why?”

“Wouldn't that be better than knowing that people are saying things?”
 she asked.

“As to that,” replied Ransford, “you can't prevent people saying
things--especially in a town like this. If it hadn't been for the
unfortunate fact that Braden came to the surgery door, nothing would
have been said. But what of that?--I have known hundreds of men in my
time--aye, and forgotten them! No!--I am not going to fall a victim
to this device--it all springs out of curiosity. As to this last
affair--it's all nonsense!”

“But--if the man was really poisoned?” suggested Mary.

“Let the police find the poisoner!” said Ransford, with a grim smile.
“That's their job.”

Mary said nothing for a moment, and Ransford moved restlessly about the
room.

“I don't trust that fellow Bryce,” he said suddenly. “He's up to
something. I don't forget what he said when I bundled him out that
morning.”

“What?” she asked.

“That he would be a bad enemy,” answered Ransford. “He's posing now as a
friend--but a man's never to be so much suspected as when he comes
doing what you may call unnecessary acts of friendship. I'd rather that
anybody was mixed up in my affairs--your affairs--than Pemberton Bryce!”

“So would I!” she said. “But--”

She paused there a moment and then looked appealingly at Ransford.

“I do wish you'd tell me--what you promised to tell me,” she said. “You
know what I mean--about me and Dick. Somehow--I don't quite know how or
why--I've an uneasy feeling that Bryce knows something, and that he's
mixing it all up with--this! Why not tell me--please!”

Ransford, who was still marching about the room, came to a halt, and
leaning his hands on the table between them, looked earnestly at her.

“Don't ask that--now!” he said. “I can't--yet. The fact is, I'm waiting
for something--some particulars. As soon as I get them, I'll speak to
you--and to Dick. In the meantime--don't ask me again--and don't be
afraid. And as to this affair, leave it to me--and if you meet Bryce
again, refuse to discuss any thing with him. Look here!--there's
only one reason why he professes friendliness and a desire to save me
annoyance. He thinks he can ingratiate himself with--you!”

“Mistaken!” murmured Mary, shaking her head. “I don't trust him.
And--less than ever because of yesterday. Would an honest man have done
what he did? Let that police inspector talk freely, as he did, with
people concealed behind a curtain? And--he laughed about it! I hated
myself for being there--yet could we help it?”

“I'm not going to hate myself on Pemberton Bryce's account,” said
Ransford. “Let him play his game--that he has one, I'm certain.”

Bryce had gone away to continue his game--or another line of it. The
Collishaw matter had not made him forget the Richard Jenkins tomb, and
now, after leaving Ransford's house, he crossed the Close to Paradise
with the object of doing a little more investigation. But at the archway
of the ancient enclosure he met old Simpson Harker, pottering about in
his usual apparently aimless fashion. Harker smiled at sight of Bryce.

“Ah, I was wanting to have a word with you, doctor!” he said. “Something
important. Have you got a minute or two to spare, sir? Come round to my
little place, then--we shall be quiet there.”

Bryce had any amount of time to spare for an interesting person like
Harker, and he followed the old man to his house--a tiny place set in
a nest of similar old-world buildings behind the Close. Harker led
him into a little parlour, comfortable and snug, wherein were several
shelves of books of a curiously legal and professional-looking aspect,
some old pictures, and a cabinet of odds and ends, stowed away in of
dark corner. The old man motioned him to an easy chair, and going over
to a cupboard, produced a decanter of whisky and a box of cigars.

“We can have a peaceful and comfortable talk here, doctor,” he remarked,
as he sat down near Bryce, after fetching glasses and soda-water. “I
live all alone, like a hermit--my bit of work's done by a woman who
only looks in of a morning. So we're all by ourselves. Light your
cigar!--same as that I gave you at Barthorpe. Um--well, now,” he
continued, as Bryce settled down to listen. “There's a question I want
to put to you--strictly between ourselves--strictest of confidence, you
know. It was you who was called to Braden by Varner, and you were left
alone with Braden's body?”

“Well?” admitted Bryce, suddenly growing suspicious. “What of it?”

Harker edged his chair a little closer to his guest's, and leaned
towards him.

“What,” he asked in a whisper, “what have you done with that scrap of
paper that you took out of Braden's purse?”


CHAPTER XIV. FROM THE PAST


If any remarkably keen and able observer of the odd characteristics of
humanity had been present in Harker's little parlour at that moment,
watching him and his visitor, he would have been struck by what happened
when the old man put this sudden and point-blank question to the young
one. For Harker put the question, though in a whisper, in no more than
a casual, almost friendlily-confidential way, and Bryce never showed by
the start of a finger or the flicker of an eyelash that he felt it to be
what he really knew it to be--the most surprising and startling question
he had ever had put to him. Instead, he looked his questioner calmly in
the eyes, and put a question in his turn.

“Who are you, Mr. Harker?” asked Bryce quietly.

Harker laughed--almost gleefully.

“Yes, you've a right to ask that!” he said. “Of course!--glad you take
it that way. You'll do!”

“I'll qualify it, then,” added Bryce. “It's not who--it's what are you!”

Harker waved his cigar at the book-shelves in front of which his visitor
sat.

“Take a look at my collection of literature, doctor,” he said. “What
d'ye think of it?”

Bryce turned and leisurely inspected one shelf after another.

“Seems to consist of little else but criminal cases and legal
handbooks,” he remarked quietly. “I begin to suspect you, Mr. Harker.
They say here in Wrychester that you're a retired tradesman. I think
you're a retired policeman--of the detective branch.”

Harker laughed again.

“No Wrychester man has ever crossed my threshold since I came to settle
down here,” he said. “You're the first person I've ever asked in--with
one notable exception. I've never even had Campany, the librarian, here.
I'm a hermit.”

“But--you were a detective?” suggested Bryce.

“Aye, for a good five-and-twenty years!” replied Harker. “And pretty
well known, too, sir. But--my question, doctor. All between ourselves!”

“I'll ask you one, then,” said Bryce. “How do you know I took a scrap of
paper from Braden's purse?”

“Because I know that he had such a paper in his purse the night he came
to the Mitre,” answered Harker, “and was certain to have it there next
morning, and because I also know that you were left alone with the body
for some minutes after Varner fetched you to it, and that when Braden's
clothing and effects were searched by Mitchington, the paper wasn't
there. So, of course, you took it! Doesn't matter to me that ye
did--except that I know, from knowing that, that you're on a similar
game to my own--which is why you went down to Leicestershire.”

“You knew Braden?” asked Bryce.

“I knew him!” answered Harker.

“You saw him--spoke with him--here in Wrychester?” suggested Bryce.

“He was here--in this room--in that chair--from five minutes past nine
to close on ten o'clock the night before his death,” replied Harker.

Bryce, who was quietly appreciating the Havana cigar which the old man
had given him, picked up his glass, took a drink, and settled himself in
his easy chair as if he meant to stay there awhile.

“I think we'd better talk confidentially, Mr. Harker,” he said.

“Precisely what we are doing, Dr. Bryce,” replied Harker.

“All right, my friend,” said Bryce, laconically. “Now we understand each
other. So--do you know who John Braden really was?”

“Yes!” replied Harker, promptly. “He was in reality John Brake, ex-bank
manager, ex-convict.”

“Do you know if he's any relatives here in Wrychester?” inquired Bryce.

“Yes,” said Harker. “The boy and girl who live with Ransford--they're
Brake's son and daughter.”

“Did Brake know that--when he came here?” continued Bryce.

“No, he didn't--he hadn't the least idea of it,” responded Harker.

“Had you--then?” asked Bryce.

“No--not until later--a little later,” replied Harker.

“You found it out at Barthorpe?” suggested Bryce.

“Not a bit of it; I worked it out here--after Brake was dead,” said
Harker. “I went to Barthorpe on quite different business--Brake's
business.”

“Ah!” said Bryce. He looked the old detective quietly in the eyes.
“You'd better tell me all about it,” he added.

“If we're both going to tell each other--all about it,” stipulated
Harker.

“That's settled,” assented Bryce.

Harker smoked thoughtfully for a moment and seemed to be thinking.

“I'd better go back to the beginning,” he said. “But, first--what do you
know about Brake? I know you went down to Barthorpe to find out what you
could--how far did your searches take you?”

“I know that Brake married a girl from Braden Medworth, that he took
her to London, where he was manager of a branch bank, that he got into
trouble, and was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude,” answered
Bryce, “together with some small details into which we needn't go at
present.”

“Well, as long as you know all that, there's a common basis and a common
starting-point,” remarked Harker, “so I'll begin at Brake's trial. It
was I who arrested Brake. There was no trouble, no bother. He'd been
taken unawares, by an inspector of the bank. He'd a considerable
deficiency--couldn't make it good--couldn't or wouldn't explain except
by half-sullen hints that he'd been cruelly deceived. There was no
defence--couldn't be. His counsel said that he could--”

“I've read the account of the trial,” interrupted Bryce.

“All right--then you know as much as I can tell you on that point,” said
Harker. “He got, as you say, ten years. I saw him just before he was
removed and asked him if there was anything I could do for him about his
wife and children. I'd never seen them--I arrested him at the bank,
and, of course, he was never out of custody after that. He answered in
a queer, curt way that his wife and children were being looked after.
I heard, incidentally, that his wife had left home, or was from
home--there was something mysterious about it--either as soon as he
was arrested or before. Anyway, he said nothing, and from that moment
I never set eyes on him again until I met him in the street here in
Wrychester, the other night, when he came to the Mitre. I knew him at
once--and he knew me. We met under one of those big standard lamps in
the Market Place--I was following my usual practice of having an evening
walk, last thing before going to bed. And we stopped and stared at each
other. Then he came forward with his hand out, and we shook hands. 'This
is an odd thing!' he said. 'You're the very man I wanted to find! Come
somewhere, where it's quiet, and let me have a word with you.' So--I
brought him here.”

Bryce was all attention now--for once he was devoting all his faculties
to tense and absorbed concentration on what another man could tell,
leaving reflections and conclusions on what he heard until all had been
told.

“I brought him here,” repeated Harker. “I told him I'd been retired
and was living here, as he saw, alone. I asked him no questions about
himself--I could see he was a well-dressed, apparently well-to-do man.
And presently he began to tell me about himself. He said that after he'd
finished his term he left England and for some time travelled in
Canada and the United States, and had gone then--on to New Zealand and
afterwards to Australia, where he'd settled down and begun speculating
in wool. I said I hoped he'd done well. Yes, he said, he'd done very
nicely--and then he gave me a quiet dig in the ribs. 'I'll tell you one
thing I've done, Harker,' he said. 'You were very polite and considerate
to me when I'd my trouble, so I don't mind telling you. I paid the
bank every penny of that money they lost through my foolishness at that
time--every penny, four years ago, with interest, and I've got their
receipt.' 'Delighted to hear it, Mr.--Is it the same name still?' I
said. 'My name ever since I left England,' he said, giving me a look,
'is Braden--John Braden.' 'Yes,' he went on, 'I paid 'em--though I
never had one penny of the money I was fool enough to take for the
time being--not one halfpenny!' 'Who had it, Mr. Braden?' I asked him,
thinking that he'd perhaps tell after all that time. 'Never mind, my
lad!' he answered. 'It'll come out--yet. Never mind that, now. I'll tell
you why I wanted to see you. The fact is, I've only been a few hours in
England, so to speak, but I'd thought of you, and wondered where I could
get hold of you--you're the only man of your profession I ever met, you
see,' he added, with a laugh. 'And I want a bit of help in that way.'
'Well, Mr. Braden,' I said, 'I've retired, but if it's an easy job--'
'It's one you can do, easy enough,' he said. 'It's just this--I met a
man in Australia who's extremely anxious to get some news of another
man, named Falkiner Wraye, who hails from Barthorpe, in Leicestershire.
I promised to make inquiries for him. Now, I have strong reasons why I
don't want to go near Barthorpe--Barthorpe has unpleasant memories and
associations for me, and I don't want to be seen there. But this thing's
got to be personal investigation--will you go here, for me? I'll make
it worth your while. All you've got to do,' he went on, 'is to go
there--see the police authorities, town officials, anybody that knows
the place, and ask them if they can tell you anything of one Falkiner
Wraye, who was at one time a small estate agent in Barthorpe, left the
place about seventeen years ago--maybe eighteen--and is believed to
have recently gone back to the neighbourhood. That's all. Get what
information you can, and write it to me, care of my bankers in London.
Give me a sheet of paper and I'll put down particulars for you.'”

Harker paused at this point and nodded his head at an old bureau which
stood in a corner of his room.

“The sheet of paper's there,” he said. “It's got on it, in his writing,
a brief memorandum of what he wanted and the address of his bankers.
When he'd given it to me, he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a
purse in which I could see he was carrying plenty of money. He took out
some notes. 'Here's five-and-twenty pounds on account, Harker,' he said.
'You might have to spend a bit. Don't be afraid--plenty more where that
comes from. You'll do it soon?' he asked. 'Yes, I'll do it, Mr. Braden,'
I answered. 'It'll be a bit of a holiday for me.' 'That's all right,'
he said. 'I'm delighted I came across you.' 'Well, you couldn't be more
delighted than I was surprised,' I said. 'I never thought to see you
in Wrychester. What brought you here, if one may ask--sight-seeing?'
He laughed at that, and he pulled out his purse again. 'I'll show you
something--a secret,' he said, and he took a bit of folded paper out of
his purse. 'What do you make of that?' he asked. 'Can you read Latin?'
'No--except a word or two,' I said, 'but I know a man who can.' 'Ah,
never mind,' said he. 'I know enough Latin for this--and it's a secret.
However, it won't be a secret long, and you'll hear all about it.'
And with that he put the bit of paper in his purse again, and we began
talking about other matters, and before long he said he'd promised to
have a chat with a gentleman at the Mitre whom he'd come along with
in the train, and away he went, saying he'd see me before be left the
town.”

“Did he say how long he was going to stop here?” asked Bryce.

“Two or three days,” replied Harker.

“Did he mention Ransford?” inquired Bryce.

“Never!” said Harker.

“Did he make any reference to his wife and children?”

“Not the slightest!”

“Nor to the hint that his counsel threw out at the trial?”

“Never referred to that time except in the way I told you--that he
hadn't a penny of the money, himself and that he'd himself refunded it.”

Bryce meditated awhile. He was somewhat puzzled by certain points in the
old detective's story, and he saw now that there was much more mystery
in the Braden affair than he had at first believed.

“Well,” he asked, after a while, “did you see him again?”

“Not alive!” replied Harker. “I saw him dead--and I held my tongue, and
have held it. But--something happened that day. After I heard of the
accident, I went into the Crown and Cushion tavern--the fact was, I went
to get a taste of whisky, for the news had upset me. And in that long
bar of theirs, I saw a man whom I knew--a man whom I knew, for a fact,
to have been a fellow convict of Brake's. Name of Glassdale--forgery.
He got the same sentence that Brake got, about the same time, was in the
same convict prison with Brake, and he and Brake would be released about
the same date. There was no doubt about his identity--I never forget a
face, even after thirty years I'd tell one. I saw him in that bar before
he saw me, and I took a careful look at him. He, too, like Brake, was
very well dressed, and very prosperous looking. He turned as he set down
his glass, and caught sight of me--and he knew me. Mind you, he'd been
through my hands in times past! And he instantly moved to a side-door
and--vanished. I went out and looked up and down--he'd gone. I found out
afterwards, by a little quiet inquiry, that he'd gone straight to the
station, boarded the first train--there was one just giving out, to the
junction--and left the city. But I can lay hands on him!”

“You've kept this quiet, too?” asked Bryce.

“Just so--I've my own game to play,” replied Harker. “This talk with
you is part of it--you come in, now--I'll tell you why, presently. But
first, as you know, I went to Barthorpe. For, though Brake was dead,
I felt I must go--for this reason. I was certain that he wanted that
information for himself--the man in Australia was a fiction. I went,
then--and learned nothing. Except that this Falkiner Wraye had been,
as Brake said, a Barthorpe man, years ago. He'd left the town eighteen
years since, and nobody knew anything about him. So I came home. And now
then, doctor--your turn! What were you after, down there at Barthorpe?”

Bryce meditated his answer for a good five minutes. He had always
intended to play the game off his own bat, but he had heard and seen
enough since entering Harker's little room to know that he was in
company with an intellect which was keener and more subtle than his, and
that it would be all to his advantage to go in with the man who had vast
and deep experience. And so he made a clean breast of all he had done in
the way of investigation, leaving his motive completely aside.

“You've got a theory, of course?” observed Harker, after listening
quietly to all that Bryce could tell. “Naturally, you have! You couldn't
accumulate all that without getting one.”

“Well,” admitted Bryce, “honestly, I can't say that I have. But I can
see what theory there might be. This--that Ransford was the man who
deceived Brake, that he ran away with Brake's wife, that she's dead,
and that he's brought up the children in ignorance of all that--and
therefore--”

“And therefore,” interrupted Harker with a smile, “that when he and
Brake met--as you seem to think they did--Ransford flung Brake through
that open doorway; that Collishaw witnessed it, that Ransford's found
out about Collishaw, and that Collishaw has been poisoned by Ransford.
Eh?”

“That's a theory that seems to be supported by facts,” said Bryce.

“It's a theory that would doubtless suit men like Mitchington,” said the
old detective, with another smile. “But--not me, sir! Mind you, I don't
say there isn't something in it--there's doubtless a lot. But--the
mystery's a lot thicker than just that. And Brake didn't come here to
find Ransford. He came because of the secret in that scrap of paper. And
as you've got it, doctor--out with it!”

Bryce saw no reason for concealment and producing the scrap of paper
laid it on the table between himself and his host. Harker peered
inquisitively at it.

“Latin!” he said. “You can read it, of course. What does it say?”

Bryce repeated a literal translation.

“I've found the place,” he added. “I found it this morning. Now, what do
you suppose this means?”

Harker was looking hard at the two lines of writing.

“That's a big question, doctor,” he answered. “But I'll go so far as to
say this--when we've found out what it does mean, we shall know a lot
more than we know now!”


CHAPTER XV. THE DOUBLE OFFER


Bryce, who was deriving a considerable and peculiar pleasure from his
secret interview with the old detective, smiled at Harker's last remark.

“That's a bit of a platitude, isn't it?” he suggested. “Of course we
shall know a lot more--when we do know a lot more!”

“I set store by platitudes, sir,” retorted Harker. “You can't repeat an
established platitude too often--it's got the hallmark of good use on
it. But now, till we do know more--you've no doubt been thinking a lot
about this matter, Dr. Bryce--hasn't it struck you that there's one
feature in connection with Brake, or Braden's visit to Wrychester to
which nobody's given any particular attention up to now--so far as we
know, at any rate?”

“What?” demanded Bryce.

“This,” replied Harker. “Why did he wish to see the Duke of Saxonsteade?
He certainly did want to see him--and as soon as possible. You'll
remember that his Grace was questioned about that at the inquest and
could give no explanation--he knew nothing of Brake, and couldn't
suggest any reason why Brake should wish to have an interview with him.
But--I can!”

“You?” exclaimed Bryce.

“I,” answered Harker. “And it's this--I spoke just now of that man
Glassdale. Now you, of course; have no knowledge of him, and as you
don't keep yourself posted in criminal history, you don't know what his
offence was?”

“You said--forgery?” replied Bryce.

“Just so--forgery,” assented Harker. “And the signature that he forged
was--the Duke of Saxonsteade's! As a matter of fact, he was the Duke's
London estate agent. He got wrong, somehow, and he forged the Duke's
name to a cheque. Now, then, considering who Glassdale is, and that he
was certainly a fellow-convict of Brake's, and that I myself saw him
here in Wrychester on the day of Brake's death--what's the conclusion
to be drawn? That Brake wanted to see the Duke on some business of
Glassdale's! Without a doubt! It may have been that he and Glassdale
wanted to visit the Duke, together.”

Bryce silently considered this suggestion for awhile.

“You said, just now, that Glassdale could be traced?” he remarked at
last.

“Traced--yes,” replied Harker. “So long as he's in England.”

“Why not set about it?” suggested Bryce.

“Not yet,” said Harker. “There's things to do before that. And the first
thing is--let's get to know what the mystery of that scrap of paper is.
You say you've found Richard Jenkins's tomb? Very well--then the thing
to do is to find out if anything is hidden there. Try it tomorrow night.
Better go by yourself--after dark. If you find anything, let me know.
And then--then we can decide on a next step. But between now and then,
there'll be the inquest on this man Collishaw. And, about that--a word
in your ear! Say as little as ever you can!--after all, you know nothing
beyond what you saw. And--we mustn't meet and talk in public--after
you've done that bit of exploring in Paradise tomorrow night, come round
here and we'll consider matters.”

There was little that Bryce could say or could be asked to say at
the inquest on the mason's labourer next morning. Public interest and
excitement was as keen about Collishaw's mysterious death as about
Braden's, for it was already rumoured through the town that if Braden
had not met with his death when he came to Wrychester, Collishaw would
still be alive. The Coroner's court was once more packed; once more
there was the same atmosphere of mystery. But the proceedings were of a
very different nature to those which had attended the inquest on
Braden. The foreman under whose orders Collishaw had been working gave
particulars of the dead man's work on the morning of his death. He
had been instructed to clear away an accumulation of rubbish which had
gathered at the foot of the south wall of the nave in consequence of
some recent repairs to the masonry--there was a full day's work before
him. All day he would be in and out of Paradise with his barrow,
wheeling away the rubbish he gathered up. The foreman had looked in on
him once or twice; he had seen him just before noon, when he appeared to
be in his usual health--he had made no complaint, at any rate. Asked if
he had happened to notice where Collishaw had set down his dinner basket
and his tin bottle while he worked, he replied that it so happened that
he had--he remembered seeing both bottle and basket and the man's jacket
deposited on one of the box-tombs under a certain yew-tree--which he
could point out, if necessary.

Bryce's account of his finding of Collishaw amounted to no more than a
bare recital of facts. Nor was much time spent in questioning the two
doctors who had conducted the post-mortem examination. Their evidence,
terse and particular, referred solely to the cause of death. The man had
been poisoned by a dose of hydrocyanic acid, which, in their opinion,
had been taken only a few minutes before his body was discovered by
Dr. Bryce. It had probably been a dose which would cause instantaneous
death. There were no traces of the poison in the remains of his dinner,
nor in the liquid in his tin bottle, which was old tea. But of the
cause of his sudden death there was no more doubt than of the effects.
Ransford had been in the court from the outset of the proceedings, and
when the medical evidence had been given he was called. Bryce, watching
him narrowly, saw that he was suffering from repressed excitement--and
that that excitement was as much due to anger as to anything else. His
face was set and stern, and he looked at the Coroner with an expression
which portended something not precisely clear at that moment. Bryce,
trying to analyse it, said to himself that he shouldn't be surprised
if a scene followed--Ransford looked like a man who is bursting to
say something in no unmistakable fashion. But at first he answered the
questions put to him calmly and decisively.

“When this man's clothing was searched,” observed the Coroner, “a box
of pills was found, Dr. Ransford, on which your writing appears. Had you
been attending him--professionally?”

“Yes,” replied Ransford. “Both Collishaw and his wife. Or, rather, to
be exact, I had been in attendance on the wife, for some weeks. A day
or two before his death, Collishaw complained to me of indigestion,
following on his meals. I gave him some digestive pills--the pills you
speak of, no doubt.”

“These?” asked the Coroner, passing over the box which Mitchington had
found.

“Precisely!” agreed Ransford. “That, at any rate, is the box, and I
suppose those to be the pills.”

“You made them up yourself?” inquired the Coroner.

“I did--I dispense all my own medicines.”

“Is it possible that the poison we have beard of, just now, could get
into one of those pills--by accident?”

“Utterly impossible!--under my hands, at any rate,” answered Ransford.

“Still, I suppose, it could have been administered in a pill?” suggested
the Coroner.

“It might,” agreed Ransford. “But,” he added, with a significant
glance at the medical men who had just given evidence. “It was not so
administered in this case, as the previous witnesses very well know!”

The Coroner looked round him, and waited a moment.

“You are at liberty to explain--that last remark,” he said at last.
“That is--if you wish to do so.” “Certainly!” answered Ransford, with
alacrity. “Those pills are, as you will observe, coated, and the man
would swallow them whole--immediately after his food. Now, it would
take some little time for a pill to dissolve, to disintegrate, to be
digested. If Collishaw took one of my pills as soon as he had eaten his
dinner, according to instructions, and if poison had been in that
pill, he would not have died at once--as he evidently did. Death
would probably have been delayed some little time until the pill had
dissolved. But, according to the evidence you have had before you, he
died quite suddenly while eating his dinner--or immediately after it.
I am not legally represented here--I don't consider it at all
necessary--but I ask you to recall Dr. Coates and to put this question
to him: Did he find one of those digestive pills in this man's stomach?”

The Coroner turned, somewhat dubiously, to the two doctors who had
performed the autopsy. But before he could speak, the superintendent
of police rose and began to whisper to him, and after a conversation
between them, he looked round at the jury, every member of which had
evidently been much struck by Ransford's suggestion.

“At this stage,” he said, “it will be necessary to adjourn. I shall
adjourn the inquiry for a week, gentlemen. You will--” Ransford, still
standing in the witness-box, suddenly lost control of himself. He
uttered a sharp exclamation and smote the ledge before him smartly with
his open hand.

“I protest against that!” he said vehemently. “Emphatically, I protest!
You first of all make a suggestion which tells against me--then, when I
demand that a question shall be put which is of immense importance to my
interests, you close down the inquiry--even if only for the moment. That
is grossly unfair and unjust!”

“You are mistaken,” said the Coroner. “At the adjourned inquiry, the two
medical men can be recalled, and you will have the opportunity--or your
solicitor will have--of asking any questions you like for the present--”

“For the present you have me under suspicion!” interrupted Ransford
hotly. “You know it--I say this with due respect to your office--as
well as I do. Suspicion is rife in the city against me. Rumour is being
spread--secretly--and, I am certain--from the police, who ought to know
better. And--I will not be silenced, Mr. Coroner!--I take this public
opportunity, as I am on oath, of saying that I know nothing whatever
of the causes of the deaths of either Collishaw or of Braden--upon my
solemn oath!”

“The inquest is adjourned to this day week,” said the Coroner quietly.

Ransford suddenly stepped down from the witness-box and without word or
glance at any one there, walked with set face and determined look out
of the court, and the excited spectators, gathering into groups,
immediately began to discuss his vigorous outburst and to take sides for
and against him.

Bryce, judging it advisable to keep away from Mitchington just then,
and, for similar reasons, keeping away from Harker also, went out of the
crowded building alone--to be joined in the street outside by Sackville
Bonham, whom he had noticed in court, in company with his stepfather,
Mr. Folliot.

Folliot, Bryce had observed, had stopped behind, exchanging some
conversation with the Coroner. Sackville came up to Bryce with a knowing
shake of the hand. He was one of those very young men who have a habit
of suggesting that their fund of knowledge is extensive and peculiar,
and Bryce waited for a manifestation.

“Queer business, all that, Bryce!” observed Sackville confidentially.
“Of course, Ransford is a perfect ass!”

“Think so?” remarked Bryce, with an inflection which suggested
that Sackville's opinion on anything was as valuable as the
Attorney-General's. “That's how it strikes you, is it?”

“Impossible that it could strike one in any other way, you know,”
 answered Sackville with fine and lofty superiority. “Ransford should
have taken immediate steps to clear himself of any suspicion. It's
ridiculous, considering his position--guardian to--to Miss Bewery, for
instance--that he should allow such rumours to circulate. By God, sir,
if it had been me, I'd have stopped 'em!--before they left the parish
pump!”

“Ah?” said Bryce. “And--how?”

“Made an example of somebody,” replied Sackville, with emphasis. “I
believe there's law in this country, isn't there?--law against libel and
slander, and that sort of thing, eh? Oh, yes!”

“Not been much time for that--yet,” remarked Bryce.

“Piles of time,” retorted Sackville, swinging his stick vigorously. “No,
sir, Ransford is an ass! However, if a man won't do things for himself,
well, his friends must do something for him. Ransford, of course,
must be pulled--dragged!--out of this infernal hole. Of course he's
suspected! But my stepfather--he's going to take a hand. And my
stepfather, Bryce, is a devilish cute old hand at a game of this sort!”

“Nobody doubts Mr. Folliot's abilities, I'm sure,” said Bryce. “But--you
don't mind saying--how is he going to take a hand?”

“Stir things towards a clearing-up,” announced Sackville promptly. “Have
the whole thing gone into--thoroughly. There are matters that haven't
been touched on, yet. You'll see, my boy!”

“Glad to hear it,” said Bryce. “But--why should Mr. Folliot be so
particular about clearing Ransford?”

Sackville swung his stick, and pulled up his collar, and jerked his nose
a trifle higher.

“Oh, well,” he said. “Of course, it's--it's a pretty well understood
thing, don't you know--between myself and Miss Bewery, you know--and of
course, we couldn't have any suspicions attaching to her guardian, could
we, now? Family interest, don't you know--Caesar's wife, and all that
sort of thing, eh?”

“I see,” answered Bryce, quietly,--“sort of family arrangement. With
Ransford's consent and knowledge, of course?”

“Ransford won't even be consulted,” said Sackville, airily. “My
stepfather--sharp man, that, Bryce!--he'll do things in his own fashion.
You look out for sudden revelations!”

“I will,” replied Bryce. “By-bye!”

He turned off to his rooms, wondering how much of truth there was in the
fatuous Sackville's remarks. And--was there some mystery still undreamt
of by himself and Harker? There might be--he was still under the
influence of Ransford's indignant and dramatic assertion of his
innocence. Would Ransford have allowed himself an outburst of that sort
if he had not been, as he said, utterly ignorant of the immediate cause
of Braden's death? Now Bryce, all through, was calculating, for his
own purposes, on Ransford's share, full or partial, in that death--if
Ransford really knew nothing whatever about it, where did his, Bryce's
theory, come in--and how would his present machinations result? And,
more--if Ransford's assertion were true, and if Varner's story of the
hand, seen for an instant in the archway, were also true--and Varner was
persisting in it--then, who was the man who flung Braden to his death
that morning? He realized that, instead of straightening out, things
were becoming more and more complicated.

But he realized something else. On the surface, there was a strong case
of suspicion against Ransford. It had been suggested that very morning
before a coroner and his jury; it would grow; the police were already
permeated with suspicion and distrust. Would it not pay him, Bryce, to
encourage, to help it? He had his own score to pay off against Ransford;
he had his own schemes as regards Mary Bewery. Anyway, he was not going
to share in any attempts to clear the man who had bundled him out of his
house unceremoniously--he would bide his time. And in the meantime there
were other things to be done--one of them that very night.

But before Bryce could engage in his secret task of excavating a small
portion of Paradise in the rear of Richard Jenkins's tomb, another
strange development came. As the dark fell over the old city that night
and he was thinking of setting out on his mission, Mitchington came
in, carrying two sheets of paper, obviously damp from the press, in his
hand. He looked at Bryce with an expression of wonder.

“Here's a queer go!” he said. “I can't make this out at all! Look at
these big handbills--but perhaps you've seen 'em? They're being posted
all over the city--we've had a bundle of 'em thrown in on us.”

“I haven't been out since lunch,” remarked Bryce. “What are they?”

Mitchington spread out the two papers on the table, pointing from one to
the other.

“You see?” he said. “Five Hundred Pounds Reward!--One Thousand Pounds
Reward! And--both out at the same time, from different sources!”

“What sources?” asked Bryce, bending over the bills. “Ah--I see. One
signed by Phipps & Maynard, the other by Beachcroft. Odd, certainly!”

“Odd?” exclaimed Mitchington. “I should think so! But, do you see,
doctor? that one--five hundred reward--is offered for information of any
nature relative to the deaths of John Braden and James Collishaw, both
or either. That amount will be paid for satisfactory information by
Phipps & Maynard. And Phipps & Maynard are Ransford's solicitors! That
bill, sir, comes from him! And now the other, the thousand pound one,
that offers the reward to any one who can give definite information as
to the circumstances attending the death of John Braden--to be paid by
Mr. Beachcroft. And he's Mr. Folliot's solicitor! So--that comes from
Mr. Folliot. What has he to do with it? And are these two putting their
heads together--or are these bills quite independent of each other? Hang
me if I understand it!”

Bryce read and re-read the contents of the two bills. And then he
thought for awhile before speaking.

“Well,” he said at last, “there's probably this in it--the Folliots are
very wealthy people. Mrs. Folliot, it's pretty well known, wants her son
to marry Miss Bewery--Dr. Ransford's ward. Probably she doesn't wish
any suspicion to hang over the family. That's all I can suggest. In
the other case, Ransford wants to clear himself. For don't forget this,
Mitchington!--somewhere, somebody may know something! Only something.
But that something might clear Ransford of the suspicion that's
undoubtedly been cast upon him. If you're thinking to get a strong case
against Ransford, you've got your work set. He gave your theory a nasty
knock this morning by his few words about that pill. Did Coates and
Everest find a pill, now?”

“Not at liberty to say, sir,” answered Mitchington. “At present, anyway.
Um! I dislike these private offers of reward--it means that those who
make 'em get hold of information which is kept back from us, d'you see!
They're inconvenient.”

Then he went away, and Bryce, after waiting awhile, until night had
settled down, slipped quietly out of the house and set off for the gloom
of Paradise.


CHAPTER XVI. BEFOREHAND


In accordance with his undeniable capacity for contriving and scheming,
Bryce had made due and careful preparations for his visit to the tomb
of Richard Jenkins. Even in the momentary confusion following upon his
discovery of Collishaw's dead body, he had been sufficiently alive to
his own immediate purposes to notice that the tomb--a very ancient and
dilapidated structure--stood in the midst of a small expanse of stone
pavement between the yew-trees and the wall of the nave; he had noticed
also that the pavement consisted of small squares of stone, some
of which bore initials and dates. A sharp glance at the presumed
whereabouts of the particular spot which he wanted, as indicated in the
scrap of paper taken from Braden's purse, showed him that he would have
to raise one of those small squares--possibly two or three of them.
And so he had furnished himself with a short crowbar of tempered steel,
specially purchased at the iron-monger's, and with a small bull's-eye
lantern. Had he been arrested and searched as he made his way towards
the cathedral precincts he might reasonably have been suspected of a
design to break into the treasury and appropriate the various ornaments
for which Wrychester was famous. But Bryce feared neither arrest nor
observation. During his residence in Wrychester he had done a good deal
of prowling about the old city at night, and he knew that Paradise, at
any time after dark, was a deserted place. Folk might cross from the
close archway to the wicket-gate by the outer path, but no one would
penetrate within the thick screen of yew and cypress when night had
fallen. And now, in early summer, the screen of trees and bushes was so
thick in leaf, that once within it, foliage on one side, the great walls
of the nave on the other, there was little likelihood of any person
overlooking his doings while he made his investigation. He anticipated a
swift and quiet job, to be done in a few minutes.

But there was another individual in Wrychester who knew just as much of
the geography of Paradise as Pemberton Bryce knew. Dick Bewery and
Betty Campany had of late progressed out of the schoolboy and schoolgirl
hail-fellow-well-met stage to the first dawnings of love, and in spite
of their frequent meetings had begun a romantic correspondence between
each other, the joy and mystery of which was increased a hundredfold
by a secret method of exchange of these missives. Just within the
wicket-gate entrance of Paradise there was an old monument wherein was a
convenient cavity--Dick Bewery's ready wits transformed this into love's
post-office. In it he regularly placed letters for Betty: Betty stuffed
into it letters for him. And on this particular evening Dick had gone
to Paradise to collect a possible mail, and as Bryce walked leisurely up
the narrow path, enclosed by trees and old masonry which led from Friary
Lane to the ancient enclosure, Dick turned a corner and ran full into
him. In the light of the single lamp which illumined the path, the two
recovered themselves and looked at each other.

“Hullo!” said Bryce. “What's your hurry, young Bewery?”

Dick, who was panting for breath, more from excitement than haste, drew
back and looked at Bryce. Up to then he knew nothing much against Bryce,
whom he had rather liked in the fashion in which boys sometimes like
their seniors, and he was not indisposed to confide in him.

“Hullo!” he replied. “I say! Where are you off to?”

“Nowhere!--strolling round,” answered Bryce. “No particular purpose,
why?”

“You weren't going in--there?” asked Dick, jerking a thumb towards
Paradise.

“In--there!” exclaimed Bryce. “Good Lord, no!--dreary enough in the
daytime! What should I be going in there for?”

Dick seized Bryce's coat-sleeve and dragged him aside.

“I say!” he whispered. “There's something up in there--a search of some
sort!”

Bryce started in spite of an effort to keep unconcerned.

“A search? In there?” he said. “What do you mean?”

Dick pointed amongst the trees, and Bryce saw the faint glimmer of a
light.

“I was in there--just now,” said Dick. “And some men--three or
four--came along. They're in there, close up by the nave, just where you
found that chap Collishaw. They're--digging--or something of that sort!”

“Digging!” muttered Bryce. “Digging?”'

“Something like it, anyhow,” replied Dick. “Listen.”

Bryce heard the ring of metal on stone. And an unpleasant conviction
stole over him that he was being forestalled, that somebody was
beforehand with him, and he cursed himself for not having done the
previous night what he had left undone till this night.

“Who are they?” he asked. “Did you see them--their faces?”

“Not their faces,” answered Dick. “Only their figures in the gloom. But
I heard Mitchington's voice.”

“Police, then!” said Bryce. “What on earth are they after?”

“Look here!” whispered Dick, pulling at Bryce's arm again. “Come on! I
know how to get in there without their seeing us. You follow me.”

Bryce followed readily, and Dick stepping through the wicket-gate,
seized his companion's wrist and led him amongst the bushes in the
direction of the spot from whence came the metallic sounds. He walked
with the step of a cat, and Bryce took pains to follow his example.
And presently from behind a screen of cypresses they looked out on the
expanse of flagging in the midst of which stood the tomb of Richard
Jenkins.

Round about that tomb were five men whose faces were visible enough in
the light thrown by a couple of strong lamps, one of which stood on the
tomb itself, while the other was set on the ground. Four out of the five
the two watchers recognized at once. One, kneeling on the flags, and
busy with a small crowbar similar to that which Bryce carried inside his
overcoat, was the master-mason of the cathedral. Another, standing
near him, was Mitchington. A third was a clergyman--one of the lesser
dignitaries of the Chapter. A fourth--whose presence made Bryce start
for the second time that evening--was the Duke of Saxonsteade. But the
fifth was a stranger--a tall man who stood between Mitchington and
the Duke, evidently paying anxious attention to the master-mason's
proceedings. He was no Wrychester man--Bryce was convinced of that.

And a moment later he was convinced of another equally certain fact.
Whatever these five men were searching for, they had no clear or
accurate idea of its exact whereabouts. The master-mason was taking up
the small squares of flagstone with his crowbar one by one, from the
outer edge of the foot of the old box-tomb; as he removed each, he
probed the earth beneath it. And Bryce, who had instinctively realized
what was happening, and knew that somebody else than himself was in
possession of the secret of the scrap of paper, saw that it would be
some time before they arrived at the precise spot indicated in the Latin
directions. He quietly drew back and tugged at Dick Bewery.

“Stop here, and keep quiet!” he whispered when they had retreated out
of all danger of being overheard. “Watch 'em! I want to fetch
somebody--want to know who that stranger is. You don't know him?”

“Never seen him before,” replied Dick. “I say!--come quietly back--don't
give it away. I want to know what it's all about.”

Bryce squeezed the lad's arm by way of assurance and made his way back
through the bushes. He wanted to get hold of Harker, and at once, and
he hurried round to the old man's house and without ceremony walked
into his parlour. Harker, evidently expecting him, and meanwhile amusing
himself with his pipe and book, rose from his chair as the younger man
entered.

“Found anything?” he asked.

“We're done!” answered Bryce. “I was a fool not to go last night! We're
forestalled, my friend!--that's about it!”

“By--whom?” inquired Harker.

“There are five of them at it, now,” replied Bryce. “Mitchington,
a mason, one of the cathedral clergy, a stranger, and the Duke of
Saxonsteade! What do you think of that?”

Harker suddenly started as if a new light had dawned on him.

“The Duke!” he exclaimed. “You don't say so! My conscience!--now, I
wonder if that can really be? Upon my word, I'd never thought of it!”

“Thought of what?” demanded Bryce.

“Never mind! tell you later,” said Harker. “At present, is there any
chance of getting a look at them?”

“That's what I came for,” retorted Bryce. “I've been watching them, with
young Bewery. He put me up to it. Come on! I want to see if you know the
man who's a stranger.”

Harker crossed the room to a chest of drawers, and after some rummaging
pulled something out.

“Here!” he said, handing some articles to Bryce. “Put those on over
your boots. Thick felt overshoes--you could walk round your own mother's
bedroom in those and she'd never hear you. I'll do the same. A stranger,
you say? Well, this is a proof that somebody knows the secret of that
scrap of paper besides us, doctor!”

“They don't know the exact spot,” growled Bryce, who was chafing at
having been done out of his discovery. “But, they'll find it, whatever
may be there.”

He led Harker back to Paradise and to the place where he had left Dick
Bewery, whom they approached so quietly that Bryce was by the lad's side
before Dick knew he was there. And Harker, after one glance at the ring
of faces, drew Bryce back and put his lips close to his ear and breathed
a name in an almost imperceptible yet clear whisper.

“Glassdale!”

Bryce started for the third time. Glassdale!--the man whom Harker
had seen in Wrychester within an hour or so of Braden's death: the
ex-convict, the forger, who had forged the Duke of Saxonsteade's name!
And there! standing, apparently quite at his ease, by the Duke's side.
What did it all mean?

There was no explanation of what it meant to be had from the man whom
Bryce and Harker and Dick Bewery secretly watched from behind the screen
of cypress trees. Four of them watched in silence, or with no more than
a whispered word now and then while the fifth worked. This man worked
methodically, replacing each stone as he took it up and examined the
soil beneath it. So far nothing had resulted, but he was by that
time working at some distance from the tomb, and Bryce, who had an
exceedingly accurate idea of where the spot might be, as indicated
in the measurements on the scrap of paper, nudged Harker as the
master-mason began to take up the last of the small flags. And suddenly
there was a movement amongst the watchers, and the master-mason looked
up from his job and motioned Mitchington to pass him a trowel which lay
at a little distance.

“Something here!” he said, loudly enough to reach the ears of Bryce and
his companions. “Not so deep down, neither, gentlemen!”

A few vigorous applications of the trowel, a few lumps of earth cast
out of the cavity, and the master-mason put in his hand and drew forth
a small parcel, which in the light of the lamp held close to it by
Mitchington looked to be done up in coarse sacking, secured by great
blotches of black sealing wax. And now it was Harker who nudged Bryce,
drawing his attention to the fact that the parcel, handed by the
master-mason to Mitchington was at once passed on by Mitchington to the
Duke of Saxonsteade, who, it was very plain to see, appeared to be as
much delighted as surprised at receiving it.

“Let us go to your office, inspector,” he said. “We'll examine the
contents there. Let us all go at once!”

The three figures behind the cypress trees remained immovable and silent
until the five searchers had gone away with their lamps and tools and
the sound of their retreating footsteps in Friary Lane had died out.
Then Dick Bewery moved and began to slip off, and Bryce reached out a
hand and took him by the shoulder.

“I say, Bewery!” he said. “Going to tell all that?”

Harker got in a word before Dick could answer.

“No matter if he does, doctor,” he remarked quietly. “Whatever it is,
the whole town'll know of it by tomorrow. They'll not keep it back.”

Bryce let Dick go, and the boy immediately darted off in the direction
of the close, while the two men went towards Harker's house. Neither
spoke until they were safe in the old detective's little parlour, then
Harker, turning up his lamp, looked at Bryce and shook his head.

“It's a good job I've retired!” he said, almost sadly. “I'm getting too
old for my trade, doctor. Once upon a time I should have been fit to
kick myself for not having twigged the meaning of this business sooner
than I have done!”

“Have you twigged it?” demanded Bryce, almost scornfully. “You're a
good deal cleverer than I am if you have. For hang me if I know what it
means!”

“I do!” answered Harker. He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out
a scrap-book, filled, as Bryce saw a moment later, with cuttings from
newspapers, all duly arranged and indexed. The old man glanced at the
index, turned to a certain page, and put his finger on an entry. “There
you are!” he said. “And that's only one--there are several more. They'll
tell you in detail what I can tell you in a few words and what I ought
to have remembered. It's fifteen years since the famous robbery at
Saxonsteade which has never been accounted for--robbery of the Duchess's
diamonds--one of the cleverest burglaries ever known, doctor. They were
got one night after a grand ball there; no arrest was ever made, they
were never traced. And I'll lay all I'm worth to a penny-piece that the
Duke and those men are gladding their eyes with the sight of them just
now!--in Mitchington's office--and that the information that they were
where they've just been found was given to the Duke by--Glassdale!”

“Glassdale! That man!” exclaimed Bryce, who was puzzling his brain over
possible developments.

“That man, sir!” repeated Harker. “That's why Glassdale was in
Wrychester the day of Braden's death. And that's why Braden, or Brake,
came to Wrychester at all. He and Glassdale, of course, had somehow
come into possession of the secret, and no doubt meant to tell the Duke
together, and get the reward--there was 95,000 offered! And as Brake's
dead, Glassdale's spoken, but”--here the old man paused and gave his
companion a shrewd look--“the question still remains: How did Brake come
to his end?”


CHAPTER XVII. TO BE SHADOWED


Dick Bewery burst in upon his sister and Ransford with a budget of news
such as it rarely fell to the lot of romance-loving seventeen to tell.
Secret and mysterious digging up of grave-yards by night--discovery
of sealed packets, the contents of which might only be guessed at--the
whole thing observed by hidden spectators--these were things he had read
of in fiction, but had never expected to have the luck to see in real
life. And being gifted with some powers of imagination and of narrative,
he made the most of his story to a pair of highly attentive listeners,
each of whom had his, and her, own reasons for particular attention.

“More mystery!” remarked Mary when Dick's story had come to an end.
“What a pity they didn't open the parcel!” She looked at Ransford, who
was evidently in deep thought. “I suppose it will all come out?” she
suggested.

“Sure to!” he answered, and turned to Dick. “You say Bryce fetched old
Harker--after you and Bryce had watched these operations a bit? Did he
say why he fetched him?”

“Never said anything as to his reasons,” answered Dick. “But, I rather
guessed, at the end, that Bryce wanted me to keep quiet about it, only
old Harker said there was no need.”

Ransford made no comment on this, and Dick, having exhausted his stock
of news, presently went off to bed.

“Master Bryce,” observed Ransford, after a period of silence, “is
playing a game! What it is, I don't know--but I'm certain of it. Well,
we shall see! You've been much upset by all this,” he went on, after
another pause, “and the knowledge that you have has distressed me beyond
measure! But just have a little--a very little--more patience, and
things will be cleared--I can't tell all that's in my mind, even to
you.”

Mary, who had been sewing while Ransford, as was customary with him in
an evening, read the Times to her, looked down at her work.

“I shouldn't care, if only these rumours in the town--about you--could
be crushed!” she said. “It's so cruel, so vile, that such things--”

Ransford snapped his fingers.

“I don't care that about the rumours!” he answered, contemptuously.
“They'll be crushed out just as suddenly as they arose--and then,
perhaps, I'll let certain folk in Wrychester know what I think of them.
And as regards the suspicion against me, I know already that the only
people in the town for whose opinion I care fully accept what I said
before the Coroner. As to the others, let them talk! If the thing comes
to a head before its due time--”

“You make me think that you know more--much more!--than you've ever told
me!” interrupted Mary.

“So I do!” he replied. “And you'll see in the end why I've kept silence.
Of course, if people who don't know as much will interfere--”

He was interrupted there by the ringing of the front door bell, at the
sound of which he and Mary looked at each other.

“Who can that be?” said Mary. “It's past ten o'clock.”

Ransford offered no suggestion. He sat silently waiting, until the
parlourmaid entered.

“Inspector Mitchington would be much obliged if you could give him a few
minutes, sir,” she said.

Ransford got up from his chair.

“Take Inspector Mitchington into the study,” he said. “Is he alone?”

“No, sir--there's a gentleman with him,” replied the girl.

“All right--I'll be with them presently,” answered Ransford. “Take
them both in there and light the gas. Police!” he went on, when the
parlourmaid had gone. “They get hold of the first idea that strikes
them, and never even look round for another, You're not frightened?”

“Frightened--no! Uneasy--yes!” replied Mary. “What can they want, this
time of night?”

“Probably to tell me something about this romantic tale of Dick's,”
 answered Ransford, as he left the room. “It'll be nothing more serious,
I assure you.”

But he was not so sure of that. He was very well aware that the
Wrychester police authorities had a definite suspicion of his guilt
in the Braden and Collishaw matters, and he knew from experience that
police suspicion is a difficult matter to dissipate. And before he
opened the door of the little room which he used as a study he warned
himself to be careful--and silent.

The two visitors stood near the hearth--Ransford took a good look at
them as he closed the door behind him. Mitchington he knew well enough;
he was more interested in the other man, a stranger. A quiet-looking,
very ordinary individual, who might have been half a dozen things--but
Ransford instantly set him down as a detective. He turned from this man
to the inspector.

“Well?” he said, a little brusquely. “What is it?”

“Sorry to intrude so late, Dr. Ransford,” answered Mitchington, “but I
should be much obliged if you would give us a bit of information--badly
wanted, doctor, in view of recent events,” he added, with a smile which
was meant to be reassuring. “I'm sure you can--if you will.”

“Sit down,” said Ransford, pointing to chairs. He took one himself and
again glanced at the stranger. “To whom am I speaking, in addition to
yourself, Inspector?” he asked. “I'm not going to talk to strangers.”

“Oh, well!” said Mitchington, a little awkwardly. “Of course, doctor,
we've had to get a bit of professional help in these unpleasant matters.
This gentleman's Detective-Sergeant Jettison, from the Yard.”

“What information do you want?” asked Ransford.

Mitchington glanced at the door and lowered his voice. “I may as
well tell you, doctor,” he said confidentially, “there's been a most
extraordinary discovery made tonight, which has a bearing on the Braden
case. I dare say you've heard of the great jewel robbery which took
place at the Duke of Saxonsteade's some years ago, which has been a
mystery to this very day?”

“I have heard of it,” answered Ransford.

“Very well--tonight those jewels--the whole lot!--have been discovered
in Paradise yonder, where they'd been buried, at the time of the
robbery, by the thief,” continued Mitchington. “They've just been
examined, and they're now in the Duke's own hands again--after all
these years! And--I may as well tell you--we now know that the object
of Braden's visit to Wrychester was to tell the Duke where those jewels
were hidden. Braden--and another man--had learned the secret, from
the real thief, who's dead in Australia. All that I may tell you,
doctor--for it'll be public property tomorrow.”

“Well?” said Ransford.

Mitchington hesitated a moment, as if searching for his next words. He
glanced at the detective; the detective remained immobile; he glanced at
Ransford; Ransford gave him no encouragement.

“Now look here, doctor!” he exclaimed, suddenly. “Why not tell us
something? We know now who Braden really was! That's settled. Do you
understand?”

“Who was he, then?” asked Ransford, quietly.

“He was one John Brake, some time manager of a branch of a London
bank, who, seventeen years ago, got ten years' penal servitude for
embezzlement,” answered Mitchington, watching Ransford steadily. “That's
dead certain--we know it! The man who shared this secret with him about
the Saxonsteade jewels has told us that much, today. John Brake!”

“What have you come here for?” asked Ransford.

“To ask you--between ourselves--if you can tell us anything about
Brake's earlier days--antecedents--that'll help us,” replied
Mitchington. “It may be--Jettison here--a man of experience--thinks
it'll be found to be--that Brake, or Braden as we call him--was murdered
because of his possession of that secret about the jewels. Our informant
tells us that Braden certainly had on him, when he came to Wrychester, a
sort of diagram showing the exact location of the spot where the jewels
were hidden--that diagram was most assuredly not found on Braden when
we examined his clothing and effects. It may be that it was wrested
from him in the gallery of the clerestory that morning, and that
his assailant, or assailants--for there may have been two men at
the job--afterwards pitched him through that open doorway, after
half-stifling him. And if that theory's correct--and I, personally, am
now quite inclined to it--it'll help a lot if you'll tell us what you
know of Braden's--Brake's--antecedents. Come now, doctor!--you know very
well that Braden, or Brake, did come to your surgery that morning and
said to your assistant that he'd known a Dr. Ransford in times past! Why
not speak?”

Ransford, instead of answering Mitchington's evidently genuine appeal,
looked at the New Scotland Yard man.

“Is that your theory?” he asked.

Jettison nodded his head, with a movement indicative of conviction.

“Yes, sir!” he replied. “Having regard to all the circumstances of the
case, as they've been put before me since I came here, and with special
regard to the revelations which have resulted in the discovery of these
jewels, it is! Of course, today's events have altered everything. If it
hadn't been for our informant--”

“Who is your informant?” inquired Ransford.

The two callers looked at each other--the detective nodded at the
inspector.

“Oh, well!” said Mitchington. “No harm in telling you, doctor. A man
named Glassdale--once a fellow-convict with Brake. It seems they left
England together after their time was up, emigrated together, prospered,
even went so far--both of 'em!--as to make good the money they'd
appropriated, and eventually came back together--in possession of this
secret. Brake came specially to Wrychester to tell the Duke--Glassdale
was to join him on the very morning Brake met his death. Glassdale did
come to the town that morning--and as soon as he got here, heard of
Brake's strange death. That upset him--and he went away--only to come
back today, go to Saxonsteade, and tell everything to the Duke--with the
result we've told you of.”

“Which result,” remarked Ransford, steadily regarding Mitchington, “has
apparently altered all your ideas about--me!”

Mitchington laughed a little awkwardly.

“Oh, well, come, now, doctor!” he said. “Why, yes--frankly, I'm inclined
to Jettison's theory--in fact, I'm certain that's the truth.”

“And your theory,” inquired Ransford, turning to the detective, “is--put
it in a few words.”

“My theory--and I'll lay anything it's the correct one!--is this,”
 replied Jettison. “Brake came to Wrychester with his secret. That secret
wasn't confined to him and Glassdale--either he let it out to somebody,
or it was known to somebody. I understand from Inspector Mitchington
here that on the evening of his arrival Brake was away from the Mitre
Hotel for two hours. During that time, he was somewhere--with whom?
Probably with somebody who got the secret out of him, or to whom he
communicated it. For, think!--according to Glassdale, who, we are quite
sure, has told the exact truth about everything, Brake had on him a
scrap of paper, on which were instructions, in Latin, for finding the
exact spot whereat the missing Saxonsteade jewels had been hidden, years
before, by the actual thief--who, I may tell you, sir, never had the
opportunity of returning to re-possess himself of them. Now, after
Brake's death, the police examined his clothes and effects--they never
found that scrap of paper! And I work things out this way. Brake was
followed into that gallery--a lonely, quiet place--by the man or men who
had got possession of the secret; he was, I'm told, a slightly-built,
not over-strong man--he was seized and robbed of that paper and flung
to his death. And all that fits in with the second mystery of
Collishaw--who probably knew, if not everything, then something, of the
exact circumstances of Brake's death, and let his knowledge get to the
ears of--Brake's assailant!--who cleverly got rid of him. That's my
notion,” concluded the detective. “And--I shall be surprised if it isn't
a correct one!”

“And, as I've said, doctor,” chimed in Mitchington, “can't you give us a
bit of information, now? You see the line we're on? Now, as it's evident
you once knew Braden, or Brake--”

“I have never said so!” interrupted Ransford sharply.

“Well--we infer it, from the undoubted fact that he called here,”
 remarked Mitchington. “And if--”

“Wait!” said Ransford. He had been listening with absorbed attention to
Jettison's theory, and he now rose from his chair and began to pace the
room, hands in pockets, as if in deep thought. Suddenly he paused and
looked at Mitchington. “This needs some reflection,” he said. “Are you
pressed for time?”

“Not in the least,” answered Mitchington, readily. “Our time's yours,
sir. Take as long as you like.”

Ransford touched a bell and summoning the parlourmaid told her to
fetch whisky, soda, and cigars. He pressed these things on the two men,
lighted a cigar himself, and for a long time continued to walk up and
down his end of the room, smoking and evidently in very deep thought.
The visitors left him alone, watching him curiously now and then--until,
when quite ten minutes had gone by, he suddenly drew a chair close to
them and sat down again.

“Now, listen to me!” he said. “If I give my confidence to you, as police
officials, will you give me your word that you won't make use of my
information until I give you leave--or until you have consulted me
further? I shall rely on your word, mind!”

“I say yes to that, doctor,” answered Mitchington.

“The same here, sir,” said the detective.

“Very well,” continued Ransford. “Then--this is between ourselves, until
such time as I say something more about it. First of all, I am not going
to tell you anything whatever about Braden's antecedents--at present!
Secondly--I am not sure that your theory, Mr. Jettison, is entirely
correct, though I think it is by way of coming very near to the
right one--which is sure to be worked out before long. But--on the
understanding of secrecy for the present I can tell you something which
I should not have been able to tell you but for the events of tonight,
which have made me put together certain facts. Now attention! To begin
with, I know where Braden was for at any rate some time on the evening
of the day on which he came to Wrychester. He was with the old man whom
we all know as Simpson Harker.”

Mitchington whistled; the detective, who knew nothing of Simpson
Harker, glanced at him as if for information. But Mitchington nodded at
Ransford, and Ransford went on.

“I know this for this reason,” he continued. “You know where Harker
lives. I was in attendance for nearly two hours that evening on a
patient in a house opposite--I spent a good deal of time in looking out
of the window. I saw Harker take a man into his house: I saw the man
leave the house nearly an hour later: I recognized that man next day as
the man who met his death at the Cathedral. So much for that.”

“Good!” muttered Mitchington. “Good! Explains a lot.”

“But,” continued Ransford, “what I have to tell you now is of a much
more serious--and confidential--nature. Now, do you know--but, of
course, you don't!--that your proceedings tonight were watched?”

“Watched!” exclaimed Mitchington. “Who watched us?”

“Harker, for one,” answered Ransford. “And--for another--my late
assistant, Mr. Pemberton Bryce.”

Mitchington's jaw dropped.

“God bless my soul!” he said. “You don't mean it, doctor! Why, how did
you--”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Ransford. He left the room, and the two
callers looked at each other.

“This chap knows more than you think,” observed Jettison in a whisper.
“More than he's telling now!”

“Let's get all we can, then,” said Mitchington, who was obviously much
surprised by Ransford's last information. “Get it while he's in the
mood.”

“Let him take his own time,” advised Jettison. “But--you mark me!--he
knows a lot! This is only an instalment.”

Ransford came back--with Dick Bewery, clad in a loud patterned and gaily
coloured suit of pyjamas.

“Now, Dick,” said Ransford. “Tell Inspector Mitchington precisely what
happened this evening, within your own knowledge.”

Dick was nothing loth to tell his story for the second time--especially
to a couple of professional listeners. And he told it in full detail,
from the moment of his sudden encounter with Bryce to that in which he
parted with Bryce and Harker. Ransford, watching the official faces, saw
what it was in the story that caught the official attention and excited
the official mind.

“Dr. Bryce went off at once to fetch Harker, did he?” asked Mitchington,
when Dick had made a end.

“At once,” answered Dick. “And was jolly quick back with him!”

“And Harker said it didn't matter about your telling as it would be
public news soon enough?” continued Mitchington.

“Just that,” said Dick.

Mitchington looked at Ransford, and Ransford nodded to his ward.

“All right, Dick,” he said. “That'll do.”

The boy went off again, and Mitchington shook his head.

“Queer!” he said. “Now what have those two been up to?--something,
that's certain. Can you tell us more, doctor?”

“Under the same conditions--yes,” answered Ransford, taking his seat
again. “The fact is, affairs have got to a stage where I consider it
my duty to tell you more. Some of what I shall tell you is hearsay--but
it's hearsay that you can easily verify for yourselves when the right
moment comes. Mr. Campany, the librarian, lately remarked to me that my
old assistant, Mr. Bryce, seemed to be taking an extraordinary interest
in archaeological matters since he left me--he was now, said Campany,
always examining documents about the old tombs and monuments of the
Cathedral and its precincts.”

“Ah--just so!” exclaimed Mitchington. “To be sure!--I'm beginning to
see!”

“And,” continued Ransford, “Campany further remarked, as a matter for
humorous comment, that Bryce was also spending much time looking
round our old tombs. Now you made this discovery near an old tomb, I
understand?”

“Close by one--yes,” assented the inspector.

“Then let me draw your attention to one or two strange facts--which are
undoubted facts,” continued Ransford. “Bryce was left alone with the
dead body of Braden for some minutes, while Varner went to fetch the
police. That's one.”

“That's true,” muttered Mitchington. “He was--several minutes!”

“Bryce it was who discovered Collishaw--in Paradise,” said Ransford.
“That's fact two. And fact three--Bryce evidently had a motive in
fetching Harker tonight--to overlook your operations. What was his
motive? And taking things altogether; what are, or have been, these
secret affairs which Bryce and Harker have evidently been engaged in?”

Jettison suddenly rose, buttoning his light overcoat. The action seemed
to indicate a newly-formed idea, a definite conclusion. He turned
sharply to Mitchington.

“There's one thing certain, inspector,” he said. “You'll keep an eye on
those two from this out! From--just now!”

“I shall!” assented Mitchington. “I'll have both of 'em shadowed
wherever they go or are, day or night. Harker, now, has always been a
bit of a mystery, but Bryce--hang me if I don't believe he's been having
me! Double game!--but, never mind. There's no more, doctor?”

“Not yet,” replied Ransford. “And I don't know the real meaning or value
of what I have told you. But--in two days from now, I can tell you more.
In the meantime--remember your promise!”

He let his visitors out then, and went back to Mary.

“You'll not have to wait long for things to clear,” he said. “The
mystery's nearly over!”


CHAPTER XVIII. SURPRISE


Mitchington and the man from New Scotland Yard walked away in silence
from Ransford's house and kept the silence up until they were in the
middle of the Close and accordingly in solitude. Then Mitchington turned
to his companion.

“What d'ye think of that?” he asked, with a half laugh. “Different
complexion it puts on things, eh?”

“I think just what I said before--in there,” replied the detective.
“That man knows more than he's told, even now!”

“Why hasn't he spoken sooner, then?” demanded Mitchington. “He's had two
good chances--at the inquests.”

“From what I saw of him, just now,” said Jettison, “I should say he's
the sort of man who can keep his own counsel till he considers the right
time has come for speaking. Not the sort of man who'll care twopence
whatever's said about him, you understand? I should say he's known
a good lot all along, and is just keeping it back till he can put a
finishing touch to it. Two days, didn't he say? Aye, well, a lot can
happen in two days!”

“But about your theory?” questioned Mitchington. “What do you think of
it now--in relation to what we've just heard?”

“I'll tell you what I can see,” answered Jettison. “I can see how one
bit of this puzzle fits into another--in view of what Ransford has
just told us. Of course, one's got to do a good deal of supposing it's
unavoidable in these cases. Now supposing Braden let this man Harker
into the secret of the hidden jewels that night, and supposing that
Harker and Bryce are in collusion--as they evidently are, from what that
boy told us--and supposing they between them, together or separately,
had to do with Braden's death, and supposing that man Collishaw saw some
thing that would incriminate one or both--eh?”

“Well?” asked Mitchington.

“Bryce is a medical man,” observed Jettison. “It would be an easy thing
for a medical man to get rid of Collishaw as he undoubtedly was got rid
of. Do you see my point?”

“Aye--and I can see that Bryce is a clever hand at throwing dust in
anybody's eyes!” muttered Mitchington. “I've had some dealings with him
over this affair and I'm beginning to think--only now!--that he's been
having me for the mug! He's evidently a deep 'un--and so's the other
man.”

“I wanted to ask you that,” said Jettison. “Now, exactly who are these
two?--tell me about them--both.”

“Not so much to tell,” answered Mitchington. “Harker's a quiet old chap
who lives in a little house over there--just off that far corner of
this Close. Said to be a retired tradesman, from London. Came here a few
years ago, to settle down. Inoffensive, pleasant old chap. Potters about
the town--puts in his time as such old chaps do--bit of reading at the
libraries--bit of gossip here and--there you know the sort. Last man in
the world I should have thought would have been mixed up in an affair of
this sort!”

“And therefore all the more likely to be!” said Jettison. “Well--the
other?”

“Bryce was until the very day of Braden's appearance, Ransford's
assistant,” continued Mitchington. “Been with Ransford about two years.
Clever chap, undoubtedly, but certainly deep and, in a way, reserved,
though he can talk plenty if he's so minded and it's to his own
advantage. He left Ransford suddenly--that very morning. I don't know
why. Since then he's remained in the town. I've heard that he's pretty
keen on Ransford's ward--sister of that lad we saw tonight. I don't know
myself, if it's true--but I've wondered if that had anything to do with
his leaving Ransford so suddenly.”

“Very likely,” said Jettison. They had crossed the Close by that time
and come to a gas-lamp which stood at the entrance, and the detective
pulled out his watch and glanced at it. “Ten past eleven,” he said. “You
say you know this Bryce pretty well? Now, would it be too late--if he's
up still--to take a look at him! If you and he are on good terms, you
could make an excuse. After what I've heard, I'd like to get at close
quarters with this gentleman.”

“Easy enough,” assented Mitchington. “I've been there as late as
this--he's one of the sort that never goes to bed before midnight. Come
on!--it's close by. But--not a word of where we've been. I'll say I've
dropped in to give him a bit of news. We'll tell him about the jewel
business--and see how he takes it. And while we're there--size him up!”

Mitchington was right in his description of Bryce's habits--Bryce rarely
went to bed before one o'clock in the morning. He liked to sit up,
reading. His favourite mental food was found in the lives of statesmen
and diplomatists, most of them of the sort famous for trickery and
chicanery--he not only made a close study of the ways of these gentry
but wrote down notes and abstracts of passages which particularly
appealed to him. His lamp was burning when Mitchington and Jettison came
in view of his windows--but that night Bryce was doing no thinking about
statecraft: his mind was fixed on his own affairs. He had lighted his
fire on going home and for an hour had sat with his legs stretched out
on the fender, carefully weighing things up. The event of the night had
convinced him that he was at a critical phase of his present adventure,
and it behoved him, as a good general, to review his forces.

The forestalling of his plans about the hiding-place in Paradise had
upset Bryce's schemes--he had figured on being able to turn that
secret, whatever it was, to his own advantage. It struck him now, as he
meditated, that he had never known exactly what he expected to get out
of that secret--but he had hoped that it would have been something which
would make a few more considerable and tightly-strung meshes in the net
which he was endeavouring to weave around Ransford. Now he was faced by
the fact that it was not going to yield anything in the way of help--it
was a secret no longer, and it had yielded nothing beyond the mere
knowledge that John Braden, who was in reality John Brake, had carried
the secret to Wrychester--to reveal it in the proper quarter. That
helped Bryce in no way--so far as he could see. And therefore it was
necessary to re-state his case to himself; to take stock; to see where
he stood--and more than all, to put plainly before his own mind exactly
what he wanted.

And just before Mitchington and the detective came up the path to his
door, Bryce had put his notions into clear phraseology. His aim was
definite--he wanted to get Ransford completely into his power, through
suspicion of Ransford's guilt in the affairs of Braden and Collishaw. He
wanted, at the same time, to have the means of exonerating him--whether
by fact or by craft--so that, as an ultimate method of success for his
own projects he would be able to go to Mary Bewery and say “Ransford's
very life is at my mercy: if I keep silence, he's lost: if I speak,
he's saved: it's now for you to say whether I'm to speak or hold my
tongue--and you're the price I want for my speaking to save him!” It
was in accordance with his views of human nature that Mary Bewery would
accede to his terms: he had not known her and Ransford for nothing, and
he was aware that she had a profound gratitude for her guardian, which
might even be akin to a yet unawakened warmer feeling. The probability
was that she would willingly sacrifice herself to save Ransford--and
Bryce cared little by what means he won her, fair or foul, so long as
he was successful. So now, he said to himself, he must make a still
more definite move against Ransford. He must strengthen and deepen the
suspicions which the police already had: he must give them chapter
and verse and supply them with information, and get Ransford into the
tightest of corners, solely that, in order to win Mary Bewery, he might
have the credit of pulling him out again. That, he felt certain, he
could do--if he could make a net in which to enclose Ransford he could
also invent a two-edged sword which would cut every mesh of that net
into fragments. That would be--child's play--mere statecraft--elementary
diplomacy. But first--to get Ransford fairly bottled up--that was
the thing! He determined to lose no more time--and he was thinking
of visiting Mitchington immediately after breakfast next morning when
Mitchington knocked at his door.

Bryce was rarely taken back, and on seeing Mitchington and a companion,
he forthwith invited them into his parlour, put out his whisky and
cigars, and pressed both on them as if their late call were a matter of
usual occurrence. And when he had helped both to a drink, he took one
himself, and tumbler in hand, dropped into his easy chair again.

“We saw your light, doctor--so I took the liberty of dropping into tell
you a bit of news,” observed the inspector. “But I haven't introduced my
friend--this is Detective-Sergeant Jettison, of the Yard--we've got him
down about this business--must have help, you know.”

Bryce gave the detective a half-sharp, half-careless look and nodded.

“Mr. Jettison will have abundant opportunities for the exercise of his
talents!” he observed in his best cynical manner. “I dare say he's found
that out already.”

“Not an easy affair, sir, to be sure,” assented Jettison. “Complicated!”

“Highly so!” agreed Bryce. He yawned, and glanced at the inspector.
“What's your news, Mitchington?” he asked, almost indifferently.

“Oh, well!” answered Mitchington. “As the Herald's published tomorrow
you'll see it in there, doctor--I've supplied an account for this week's
issue; just a short one--but I thought you'd like to know. You've heard
of the famous jewel robbery at the Duke's, some years ago? Yes?--well,
we've found all the whole bundle tonight--buried in Paradise! And how do
you think the secret came out?”

“No good at guessing,” said Bryce.

“It came out,” continued Mitchington, “through a man who, with
Braden--Braden, mark you!--got in possession of it--it's a long
story--and, with Braden, was going to reveal it to the Duke that very
day Braden was killed. This man waited until this very morning and
then told his Grace--his Grace came with him to us this afternoon,
and tonight we made a search and found--everything! Buried--there in
Paradise! Dug 'em up, doctor!”

Bryce showed no great interest. He took a leisurely sip at his liquor
and set down the glass and pulled out his cigarette case. The two men,
watching him narrowly, saw that his fingers were steady as rocks as he
struck the match.

“Yes,” he said as he threw the match away. “I saw you busy.”

In spite of himself Mitchington could not repress a start nor a glance
at Jettison. But Jettison was as imperturbable as Bryce himself, and
Mitchington raised a forced laugh.

“You did!” he said, incredulously. “And we thought we had it all to
ourselves! How did you come to know, doctor?”

“Young Bewery told me what was going on,” replied Bryce, “so I took
a look at you. And I fetched old Harker to take a look, too. We all
watched you--the boy, Harker, and I--out of sheer curiosity, of course.
We saw you get up the parcel. But, naturally, I didn't know what was in
it--till now.”

Mitchington, thoroughly taken aback by this candid statement, was at a
loss for words, and again he glanced at Jettison. But Jettison gave no
help, and Mitchington fell back on himself.

“So you fetched old Harker?” he said. “What--what for, doctor? If one
may ask, you know.”

Bryce made a careless gesture with his cigarette.

“Oh--old Harker's deeply interested in what's going on,” he answered.
“And as young Bewery drew my attention to your proceedings, why, I
thought I'd draw Harker's. And Harker was--interested.”

Mitchington hesitated before saying more. But eventually he risked a
leading question.

“Any special reason why he should be, doctor?” he asked.

Bryce put his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and looked
half-lazily at his questioner.

“Do you know who old Harker really is?” he inquired.

“No!” answered Mitchington. “I know nothing about him--except that he's
said to be a retired tradesman, from London, who settled down here some
time ago.”

Bryce suddenly turned on Jettison.

“Do you?” he asked.

“I, sir!” exclaimed Jettison. “I don't know this gentleman--at all!”

Bryce laughed--with his usual touch of cynical sneering.

“I'll tell you--now--who old Harker is, Mitchington,” he said. “You may
as well know. I thought Mr. Jettison might recognize the name. Harker is
no retired London tradesman--he's a retired member of your profession,
Mr. Jettison. He was in his day one of the smartest men in the service
of your department. Only he's transposed his name--ask them at the Yard
if they remember Harker Simpson? That seems to startle you, Mitchington!
Well, as you're here, perhaps I'd better startle you a bit more.”


CHAPTER XIX. THE SUBTLETY OF THE DEVIL


There was a sudden determination and alertness in Bryce's last words
which contrasted strongly, and even strangely, with the almost cynical
indifference that had characterized him since his visitors came in, and
the two men recognized it and glanced questioningly at each other. There
was an alteration, too, in his manner; instead of lounging lazily in his
chair, as if he had no other thought than of personal ease, he was now
sitting erect, looking sharply from one man to the other; his whole
attitude, bearing, speech seemed to indicate that he had suddenly made
up his mind to adopt some definite course of action.

“I'll tell you more!” he repeated. “And, since you're here--now!”

Mitchington, who felt a curious uneasiness, gave Jettison another
glance. And this time it was Jettison who spoke.

“I should say,” he remarked quietly, “knowing what I've gathered of the
matter, that we ought to be glad of any information Dr. Bryce can give
us.”

“Oh, to be sure!” assented Mitchington. “You know more, then, doctor?”

Bryce motioned his visitors to draw their chairs nearer to his, and
when he spoke it was in the low, concentrated tones of a man who means
business--and confidential business.

“Now look here, Mitchington,” he said, “and you, too, Mr. Jettison, as
you're on this job--I'm going to talk straight to both of you. And to
begin with, I'll make a bold assertion--I know more of this Wrychester
Paradise mystery--involving the deaths of both Braden and Collishaw,
than any man living--because, though you don't know it, Mitchington,
I've gone right into it. And I'll tell you in confidence why I went into
it--I want to marry Dr. Ransford's ward, Miss Bewery!”

Bryce accompanied this candid admission with a look which seemed to
say: Here we are, three men of the world, who know what things are--we
understand each other! And while Jettison merely nodded comprehendingly,
Mitchington put his thoughts into words.

“To be sure, doctor, to be sure!” he said. “And accordingly--what's
their affair, is yours! Of course!”

“Something like that,” assented Bryce. “Naturally no man wishes to marry
unless he knows as much as he can get to know about the woman he wants,
her family, her antecedents--and all that. Now, pretty nearly everybody
in Wrychester who knows them, knows that there's a mystery about Dr.
Ransford and his two wards--it's been talked of, no end, amongst the old
dowagers and gossips of the Close, particularly--you know what they are!
Miss Bewery herself, and her brother, young Dick, in a lesser degree,
know there's a mystery. And if there's one man in the world who knows
the secret, it's Ransford. And, up to now, Ransford won't tell--he
won't even tell Miss Bewery. I know that she's asked him--he keeps up an
obstinate silence. And so--I determined to find things out for myself.”

“Aye--and when did you start on that little game, now, doctor?” asked
Mitchington. “Was it before, or since, this affair developed?”

“In a really serious way--since,” replied Bryce. “What happened on the
day of Braden's death made me go thoroughly into the whole matter. Now,
what did happen? I'll tell you frankly, now, Mitchington, that when we
talked once before about this affair, I didn't tell you all I might
have told. I'd my reasons for reticence. But now I'll give you full
particulars of what happened that morning within my knowledge--pay
attention, both of you, and you'll see how one thing fits into another.
That morning, about half-past nine, Ransford left his surgery and went
across the Close. Not long after he'd gone, this man Braden came to the
door, and asked me if Dr. Ransford was in? I said he wasn't--he'd just
gone out, and I showed the man in which direction. He said he'd once
known a Dr. Ransford, and went away. A little later, I followed. Near
the entrance of Paradise, I saw Ransford leaving the west porch of the
Cathedral. He was undeniably in a state of agitation--pale, nervous. He
didn't see me. I went on and met Varner, who told me of the accident.
I went with him to the foot of St. Wrytha's Stair and found the man who
had recently called at the surgery. He died just as I reached him.
I sent for you. When you came, I went back to the surgery--I found
Ransford there in a state of most unusual agitation--he looked like a
man who has had a terrible shock. So much for these events. Put them
together.”

Bryce paused awhile, as if marshalling his facts.

“Now, after that,” he continued presently, “I began to investigate
matters myself--for my own satisfaction. And very soon I found out
certain things--which I'll summarize, briefly, because some of my facts
are doubtless known to you already. First of all--the man who came
here as John Braden was, in reality, one John Brake. He was at one
time manager of a branch of a well-known London banking company. He
appropriated money from them under apparently mysterious circumstances
of which I, as yet, knew nothing; he was prosecuted, convicted,
and sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. And those two wards
of Ransford's, Mary and Richard Bewery, as they are called, are, in
reality, Mary and Richard Brake--his children.”

“You've established that as a fact?” asked Jettison, who was listening
with close attention. “It's not a surmise on your part?”

Bryce hesitated before replying to this question. After all, he
reflected, it was a surmise. He could not positively prove his
assertion.

“Well,” he answered after a moment's thought, “I'll qualify that by
saying that from the evidence I have, and from what I know, I believe it
to be an indisputable fact. What I do know of fact, hard, positive
fact, is this:--John Brake married a Mary Bewery at the parish church of
Braden Medworth, near Barthorpe, in Leicestershire: I've seen the entry
in the register with my own eyes. His best man, who signed the register
as a witness, was Mark Ransford. Brake and Ransford, as young men, had
been in the habit of going to Braden Medworth to fish; Mary Bewery was
governess at the vicarage there. It was always supposed she would marry
Ransford; instead, she married Brake, who, of course, took her off to
London. Of their married life, I know nothing. But within a few
years, Brake was in trouble, for the reason I have told you. He was
arrested--and Harker was the man who arrested him.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mitchington. “Now, if I'd only known--”

“You'll know a lot before I'm through,” said Bryce. “Now, Harker, of
course, can tell a lot--yet it's unsatisfying. Brake could make no
defence--but his counsel threw out strange hints and suggestions--all to
the effect that Brake had been cruelly and wickedly deceived--in fact,
as it were, trapped into doing what he did. And--by a man whom he'd
trusted as a close friend. So much came to Harker's ears--but no more,
and on that particular point I've no light. Go on from that to Brake's
private affairs. At the time of his arrest he had a wife and two very
young children. Either just before, or at, or immediately after his
arrest they completely disappeared--and Brake himself utterly refused
to say one single word about them. Harker asked if he could do
anything--Brake's answer was that no one was to concern himself. He
preserved an obstinate silence on that point. The clergyman in
whose family Mrs. Brake had been governess saw Brake, after his
conviction--Brake would say nothing to him. Of Mrs. Brake, nothing more
is known--to me at any rate. What was known at the time is this--Brake
communicated to all who came in contact with him, just then, the idea
of a man who has been cruelly wronged and deceived, who takes refuge in
sullen silence, and who is already planning and cherishing--revenge!”

“Aye, aye!” muttered Mitchington. “Revenge?--just So!”

“Brake, then,” continued Bryce, “goes off to his term of penal
servitude, and so disappears--until he reappears here in Wrychester.
Leave him for a moment, and go back. And--it's a going back, no doubt,
to supposition and to theory--but there's reason in what I shall
advance. We know--beyond doubt--that Brake had been tricked and
deceived, in some money matter, by some man--some mysterious man--whom
he referred to as having been his closest friend. We know, too, that
there was extraordinary mystery in the disappearance of his wife and
children. Now, from all that has been found out, who was Brake's closest
friend? Ransford! And of Ransford, at that time, there's no trace. He,
too, disappeared--that's a fact which I've established. Years later, he
reappears--here at Wrychester, where he's bought a practice. Eventually
he has two young people, who are represented as his wards, come to live
with him. Their name is Bewery. The name of the young woman whom John
Brake married was Bewery. What's the inference? That their mother's
dead--that they're known under her maiden name: that they, without a
shadow of doubt, are John Brake's children. And that leads up to my
theory--which I'll now tell you in confidence--if you wish for it.”

“It's what I particularly wish for,” observed Jettison quietly. “The
very thing!”

“Then, it's this,” said Bryce. “Ransford was the close friend who
tricked and deceived Brake:

“He probably tricked him in some money affair, and deceived him in his
domestic affairs. I take it that Ransford ran away with Brake's wife,
and that Brake, sooner than air all his grievance to the world, took
it silently and began to concoct his ideas of revenge. I put the
whole thing this way. Ransford ran away with Mrs. Brake and the two
children--mere infants--and disappeared. Brake, when he came out of
prison, went abroad--possibly with the idea of tracking them. Meanwhile,
as is quite evident, he engaged in business and did well. He came back
to England as John Braden, and, for the reason of which you're aware,
he paid a visit to Wrychester, utterly unaware that any one known to him
lived here. Now, try to reconstruct what happened. He looks round the
Close that morning. He sees the name of Dr. Mark Ransford on the brass
plate of a surgery door. He goes to the surgery, asks a question, makes
a remark, goes away. What is the probable sequence of events? He
meets Ransford near the Cathedral--where Ransford certainly was. They
recognize each other--most likely they turn aside, go up to that gallery
as a quiet place, to talk--there is an altercation--blows--somehow
or other, probably from accident, Braden is thrown through that open
doorway, to his death. And--Collishaw saw what happened!”

Bryce was watching his listeners, turning alternately from one to the
other. But it needed little attention on his part to see that theirs
was already closely strained; each man was eagerly taking in all that
he said and suggested. And he went on emphasizing every point as he made
it.

“Collishaw saw what happened?” he repeated. “That, of course, is
theory--supposition. But now we pass from theory back to actual fact.
I'll tell you something now, Mitchington, which you've never heard of,
I'm certain. I made it in my way, after Collishaw's death, to get
some information, secretly, from his widow, who's a fairly shrewd,
intelligent woman for her class. Now, the widow, in looking over her
husband's effects, in a certain drawer in which he kept various personal
matters, came across the deposit book of a Friendly Society of which
Collishaw had been a member for some years. It appears that he,
Collishaw, was something of a saving man, and every year he managed to
put by a bit of money out of his wages, and twice or thrice in the year
he took these savings--never very much; merely a pound or two--to this
Friendly Society, which, it seems, takes deposits in that way from its
members. Now, in this book is an entry--I saw it--which shows that only
two days before his death, Collishaw paid fifty pounds--fifty pounds,
mark you!--into the Friendly Society. Where should Collishaw get fifty
pounds, all of a sudden! He was a mason's labourer, earning at the very
outside twenty-six or eight shillings a week. According to his wife,
there was no one to leave him a legacy. She never heard of his receipt
of this money from any source. But--there's the fact! What explains it?
My theory--that the rumour that Collishaw, with a pint too much ale in
him, had hinted that he could say something about Braden's death if he
chose, had reached Braden's assailant; that he had made it his business
to see Collishaw and had paid him that fifty pounds as hush-money--and,
later, had decided to rid himself of Collishaw altogether, as he
undoubtedly did, by poison.”

Once more Bryce paused--and once more the two listeners showed their
attention by complete silence.

“Now we come to the question--how was Collishaw poisoned?” continued
Bryce. “For poisoned he was, without doubt. Here we go back to
theory and supposition once more. I haven't the least doubt that the
hydrocyanic acid which caused his death was taken by him in a pill--a
pill that was in that box which they found on him, Mitchington, and
showed me. But that particular pill, though precisely similar in
appearance, could not be made up of the same ingredients which were in
the other pills. It was probably a thickly coated pill which contained
the poison;--in solution of course. The coating would melt almost
as soon as the man had swallowed it--and death would result
instantaneously. Collishaw, you may say, was condemned to death when he
put that box of pills in his waistcoat pocket. It was mere chance, mere
luck, as to when the exact moment of death came to him. There had been
six pills in that box--there were five left. So Collishaw picked out the
poisoned pill--first! It might have been delayed till the sixth dose,
you see--but he was doomed.”

Mitchington showed a desire to speak, and Bryce paused.

“What about what Ransford said before the Coroner?” asked Mitchington.
“He demanded certain information about the post-mortem, you know, which,
he said, ought to have shown that there was nothing poisonous in those
pills.”

“Pooh!” exclaimed Bryce contemptuously. “Mere bluff! Of such a pill as
that I've described there'd be no trace but the sugar coating--and the
poison. I tell you, I haven't the least doubt that that was how the
poison was administered. It was easy. And--who is there that would know
how easily it could be administered but--a medical man?”

Mitchington and Jettison exchanged glances. Then Jettison leaned nearer
to Bryce.

“So your theory is that Ransford got rid of both Braden and
Collishaw--murdered both of them, in fact?” he suggested. “Do I
understand that's what it really comes to--in plain words?”

“Not quite,” replied Bryce. “I don't say that Ransford meant to kill
Braden--my notion is that they met, had an altercation, probably
a struggle, and that Braden lost his life in it. But as regards
Collishaw--”

“Don't forget!” interrupted Mitchington. “Varner swore that he saw
Braden flung through that doorway! Flung out! He saw a hand.”

“For everything that Varner could prove to the contrary,” answered
Bryce, “the hand might have been stretched out to pull Braden back.
No--I think there may have been accident in that affair. But, as regards
Collishaw--murder, without doubt--deliberate!”

He lighted another cigarette, with the air of a man who had spoken his
mind, and Mitchington, realizing that he had said all he had to say, got
up from his seat.

“Well--it's all very interesting and very clever, doctor,” he said,
glancing at Jettison. “And we shall keep it all in mind. Of course,
you've talked all this over with Harker? I should like to know what he
has to say. Now that you've told us who he is, I suppose we can talk to
him?”

“You'll have to wait a few days, then,” said Bryce. “He's gone to
town--by the last train tonight--on this business. I've sent him. I had
some information today about Ransford's whereabouts during the time of
disappearance, and I've commissioned Harker to examine into it. When I
hear what he's found out, I'll let you know.”

“You're taking some trouble,” remarked Mitchington.

“I've told you the reason,” answered Bryce.

Mitchington hesitated a little; then, with a motion of his head towards
the door, beckoned Jettison to follow him.

“All right,” he said. “There's plenty for us to see into, I'm thinking!”

Bryce laughed and pointed to a shelf of books near the fireplace.

“Do you know what Napoleon Bonaparte once gave as sound advice to
police?” he asked. “No! Then I'll tell you. 'The art of the police,'
he said, 'is not to see that which it is useless for it to see.' Good
counsel, Mitchington!”

The two men went away through the midnight streets, and kept silence
until they were near the door of Jettison's hotel. Then Mitchington
spoke.

“Well!” he said. “We've had a couple of tales, anyhow! What do you think
of things, now?”

Jettison threw back his head with a dry laugh.

“Never been better puzzled in all my time!” he said. “Never! But--if
that young doctor's playing a game--then, by the Lord Harry, inspector,
it's a damned deep 'un! And my advice is--watch the lot!”


CHAPTER XX. JETTISON TAKES A HAND


By breakfast time next morning the man from New Scotland Yard had
accomplished a series of meditations on the confidences made to him and
Mitchington the night before and had determined on at least one course
of action. But before entering upon it he had one or two important
letters to write, the composition of which required much thought and
trouble, and by the time he had finished them, and deposited them by his
own hand in the General Post Office, it was drawing near to noon--the
great bell of the Cathedral, indeed, was proclaiming noontide to
Wrychester as Jettison turned into the police-station and sought
Mitchington in his office.

“I was just coming round to see if you'd overslept yourself,” said
Mitchington good-humouredly. “We were up pretty late last night, or,
rather, this morning.”

“I've had letters to write,” said Jettison. He sat down and picked up a
newspaper and cast a casual glance over it. “Got anything fresh?”

“Well, this much,” answered Mitchington. “The two gentlemen who told
us so much last night are both out of town. I made an excuse to call on
them both early this morning--just on nine o'clock. Dr. Ransford went up
to London by the eight-fifteen.

“Dr. Bryce, says his landlady, went out on his bicycle at half-past
eight--where, she didn't know, but, she fancied, into the country.
However, I ascertained that Ransford is expected back this evening, and
Bryce gave orders for his usual dinner to be ready at seven o'clock, and
so--”

Jettison flung away the newspaper and pulled out his pipe.

“Oh, I don't think they'll run away--either of 'em,” he remarked
indifferently. “They're both too cock-sure of their own ways of looking
at things.”

“You looked at 'em any more?” asked Mitchington.

“Done a bit of reflecting--yes,” replied the detective. “Complicated
affair, my lad! More in it than one would think at first sight. I'm
certain of this quite apart from whatever mystery there is about the
Braden affair and the Collishaw murder, there's a lot of scheming and
contriving been going on--and is going on!--somewhere, by somebody.
Underhand work, you understand? However, my particular job is the
Collishaw business--and there's a bit of information I'd like to get
hold of at once. Where's the office of that Friendly Society we heard
about last night?”

“That'll be the Wrychester Second Friendly,” answered Mitchington.
“There are two such societies in the town--the first's patronized by
small tradesmen and the like; the second by workingmen. The second does
take deposits from its members. The office is in Fladgate--secretary's
name outside--Mr. Stebbing. What are you after?”

“Tell you later,” said Jettison. “Just an idea.”

He went leisurely out and across the market square and into the narrow,
old-world street called Fladgate, along which he strolled as if doing no
more than looking about him until he came to an ancient shop which had
been converted into an office, and had a wire blind over the lower
half of its front window, wherein was woven in conspicuous gilt letters
Wrychester Second Friendly Society--George Stebbing, Secretary. Nothing
betokened romance or mystery in that essentially humble place, but it
was in Jettison's mind that when he crossed its threshold he was on his
way to discovering something that would possibly clear up the problem on
which he was engaged.

The staff of the Second Friendly was inconsiderable in numbers--an
outer office harboured a small boy and a tall young man; an inner one
accommodated Mr. Stebbing, also a young man, sandy-haired and freckled,
who, having inspected Detective-Sergeant Jettison's professional card,
gave him the best chair in the room and stared at him with a mingling of
awe and curiosity which plainly showed that he had never entertained
a detective before. And as if to show his visitor that he realized the
seriousness of the occasion, he nodded meaningly at his door.

“All safe, here, sir!” he whispered. “Well fitting doors in these old
houses--knew how to make 'em in those days. No chance of being overheard
here--what can I do for you, sir?”

“Thank you--much obliged to you,” said Jettison. “No objection to my
pipe, I suppose? Just so. Ah!--well, between you and me, Mr. Stebbing,
I'm down here in connection with that Collishaw case--you know.”

“I know, sir--poor fellow!” said the secretary. “Cruel thing, sir, if
the man was put an end to. One of our members, was Collishaw, sir.”

“So I understand,” remarked Jettison. “That's what I've come about. Bit
of information, on the quiet, eh? Strictly between our two selves--for
the present.”

Stebbing nodded and winked, as if he had been doing business with
detectives all his life. “To be sure, sir, to be sure!” he responded
with alacrity. “Just between you and me and the door post!--all right.
Anything I can do, Mr. Jettison, shall be done. But it's more in the way
of what I can tell, I suppose?”

“Something of that sort,” replied Jettison in his slow, easy-going
fashion. “I want to know a thing or two. Yours is a working-man's
society, I think? Aye--and I understand you've a system whereby such a
man can put his bits of savings by in your hands?”

“A capital system, too!” answered the secretary, seizing on a pamphlet
and pushing it into his visitor's hand. “I don't believe there's better
in England! If you read that--”

“I'll take a look at it some time,” said Jettison, putting the pamphlet
in his pocket. “Well, now, I also understand that Collishaw was in the
habit of bringing you a bit of saved money now and then a sort of saving
fellow, wasn't he?” Stebbing nodded assent and reached for a ledger
which lay on the farther side of his desk.

“Collishaw,” he answered, “had been a member  of our society
ever since it started--fourteen years ago. And he'd been putting in
savings for some eight or nine years. Not much, you'll understand. Say,
as an average, two to three pounds every half-year--never more. But,
just before his death, or murder, or whatever you like to call it, he
came in here one day with fifty pounds! Fairly astounded me, sir! Fifty
pounds--all in a lump!”

“It's about that fifty pounds I want to know something,” said Jettison.
“He didn't tell you how he'd come by it? Wasn't a legacy, for instance?”

“He didn't say anything but that he'd had a bit of luck,” answered
Stebbing. “I asked no questions. Legacy, now?--no, he didn't mention
that. Here it is,” he continued, turning over the pages of the ledger.
“There! 50 pounds. You see the date--that 'ud be two days before his
death.”

Jettison glanced at the ledger and resumed his seat.

“Now, then, Mr. Stebbing, I want you to tell me something very
definite,” he said. “It's not so long since this happened, so you'll not
have to tag your memory to any great extent. In what form did Collishaw
pay that fifty pounds to you?”

“That's easy answered, sir,” said the secretary. “It was in gold. Fifty
sovereigns--he had 'em in a bit of a bag.” Jettison reflected on this
information for a moment or two. Then he rose.

“Much obliged to you, Mr. Stebbing,” he said. “That's something worth
knowing. Now there's something else you can tell me as long as I'm
here--though, to be sure, I could save you the trouble by using my own
eyes. How many banks are there in this little city of yours?”

“Three,” answered Stebbing promptly. “Old Bank, in Monday Market; Popham
& Hargreaves, in the Square; Wrychester Bank, in Spurriergate. That's
the lot.”

“Much obliged,” said Jettison. “And--for the present--not a word of what
we've talked about. You'll be hearing more--later.”

He went away, memorizing the names of the three banking
establishments--ten minutes later he was in the private parlour of the
first, in serious conversation with its manager. Here it was necessary
to be more secret, and to insist on more secrecy than with the secretary
of the Second Friendly, and to produce all his credentials and give all
his reasons. But Jettison drew that covert blank, and the next, too, and
it was not until he had been closeted for some time with the authorities
of the third bank that he got the information he wanted. And when he
had got it, he impressed secrecy and silence on his informants in a
fashion which showed them that however easy-going his manner might be,
he knew his business as thoroughly as they knew theirs.

It was by that time past one o'clock, and Jettison turned into the small
hotel at which he had lodged himself. He thought much and gravely
while he ate his dinner; he thought still more while he smoked his
after-dinner pipe. And his face was still heavy with thought when,
at three o'clock, he walked into Mitchington's office and finding the
inspector alone shut the door and drew a chair to Mitchington's desk.

“Now then,” he said. “I've had a rare morning's work, and made a
discovery, and you and me, my lad, have got to have about as serious a
bit of talk as we've had since I came here.”

Mitchington pushed his papers aside and showed his keen attention.

“You remember what that young fellow told us last night about that man
Collishaw paying in fifty pounds to the Second Friendly two days before
his death,” said Jettison. “Well, I thought over that business a lot,
early this morning, and I fancied I saw how I could find something
out about it. So I have--on the strict quiet. That's why I went to the
Friendly Society. The fact was--I wanted to know in what form Collishaw
handed in that fifty pounds. I got to know. Gold!”

Mitchington, whose work hitherto had not led him into the mysteries of
detective enterprise, nodded delightedly.

“Good!” he said. “Rare idea! I should never have thought of it!
And--what do you make out of that, now?”

“Nothing,” replied Jettison. “But--a good deal out of what I've learned
since that bit of a discovery. Now, put it to yourself--whoever it was
that paid Collishaw that fifty pounds in gold did it with a motive. More
than one motive, to be exact--but we'll stick to one, to begin with. The
motive for paying in gold was--avoidance of discovery. A cheque can
be readily traced. So can banknotes. But gold is not easily traced.
Therefore the man who paid Collishaw fifty pounds took care to provide
himself with gold. Now then--how many men are there in a small place
like this who are likely to carry fifty pounds in gold in their pockets,
or to have it at hand?”

“Not many,” agreed Mitchington.

“Just so--and therefore I've been doing a bit of secret inquiry amongst
the bankers, as to who supplied himself with gold about that date,”
 continued Jettison. “I'd to convince 'em of the absolute necessity
of information, too, before I got any! But I got some--at the third
attempt. On the day previous to that on which Collishaw handed that
fifty pounds to Stebbing, a certain Wrychester man drew fifty pounds in
gold at his bank. Who do you think he was?”

“Who--who?” demanded Mitchington.

Jettison leaned half-across the desk.

“Bryce!” he said in a whisper. “Bryce!”

Mitchington sat up in his chair and opened his mouth in sheer
astonishment.

“Good heavens!” he muttered after a moment's silence. “You don't mean
it?”

“Fact!” answered Jettison. “Plain, incontestable fact, my lad. Dr. Bryce
keeps an account at the Wrychester bank. On the day I'm speaking of he
cashed a cheque to self for fifty pounds and took it all in gold.”

The two men looked at each other as if each were asking his companion a
question.

“Well?” said Mitchington at last. “You're a cut above me, Jettison. What
do you make of it?”

“I said last night that the young man was playing a deep game,”
 replied Jettison. “But--what game? What's he building up? For mark you,
Mitchington, if--I say if, mind!--if that fifty pounds which he drew in
gold is the identical fifty paid to Collishaw, Bryce didn't pay it as
hush-money!”

“Think not?” said Mitchington, evidently surprised. “Now, that was my
first impression. If it wasn't hush-money--”

“It wasn't hush-money, for this reason,” interrupted Jettison. “We know
that whatever else he knew, Bryce didn't know of the accident to Braden
until Varner fetched him to Braden. That's established--on what you've
put before me. Therefore, whatever Collishaw saw, before or at the
time that accident happened, it wasn't Bryce who was mixed up in it.
Therefore, why should Bryce pay Collishaw hush-money?”

Mitchington, who had evidently been thinking, suddenly pulled out a
drawer in his desk and took some papers from it which he began to turn
over.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I've an abstract here--of what the foreman at
the Cathedral mason's yard told me of what he knew as to where Collishaw
was working that morning when the accident happened--I made a note of it
when I questioned him after Collishaw's death. Here you are:

  'Foreman says that on morning of Braden's accident,
   Collishaw was at work in the north gallery of the
   clerestory, clearing away some timber which the
   carpenters had left there.  Collishaw was certainly
   thus engaged from nine o'clock until past eleven
   that morning.  Mem.  Have investigated this myself.
   From the exact spot where C. was clearing the timber,
   there is an uninterrupted view of the gallery on the
   south side of the nave, and of the arched doorway at
   the head of St.  Wrytha's Stair.'”

“'Well,” observed Jettison, “that proves what I'm saying. It wasn't
hush-money. For whoever it was that Collishaw saw lay hands on Braden,
it wasn't Bryce--Bryce, we know, was at that time coming across the
Close or crossing that path through the part you call Paradise:
Varner's evidence proves that. So--if the fifty pounds wasn't paid for
hush-money, what was it paid for?”

“Do you suggest anything?” asked Mitchington.

“I've thought of two or three things,” answered the detective. “One's
this--was the fifty pounds paid for information? If so, and Bryce has
that information, why doesn't he show his hand more plainly? If he
bribed Collishaw with fifty pounds: to tell him who Braden's assailant
was, he now knows!--so why doesn't he let it out, and have done with
it?”

“Part of his game--if that theory's right,” murmured Mitchington.

“It mayn't be right,” said Jettison. “But it's one. And there's
another--supposing he paid Collishaw that money on behalf of somebody
else? I've thought this business out right and left, top-side and
bottom-side, and hang me if I don't feel certain there is somebody else!
What did Ransford tell us about Bryce and this old Harker--think
of that! And yet, according to Bryce, Harker is one of our old Yard
men!--and therefore ought to be above suspicion.”

Mitchington suddenly started as if an idea had occurred to him.

“I say, you know!” he exclaimed. “We've only Bryce's word for it that
Harker is an ex-detective. I never heard that he was--if he is, he's
kept it strangely quiet. You'd have thought that he'd have let us know,
here, of his previous calling--I never heard of a policeman of any
rank who didn't like to have a bit of talk with his own sort about
professional matters.”

“Nor me,” assented Jettison. “And as you say, we've only Bryce's
word. And, the more I think of it, the more I'm convinced there's
somebody--some man of whom you don't seem to have the least idea--who's
in this. And it may be that Bryce is in with him. However--here's one
thing I'm going to do at once. Bryce gave us that information about the
fifty pounds. Now I'm going to tell Bryce straight out that I've gone
into that matter in my own fashion--a fashion he evidently never thought
of--and ask him to explain why he drew a similar amount in gold. Come on
round to his rooms.”

But Bryce was not to be found at his rooms--had not been back to his
rooms, said his landlady, since he had ridden away early in the morning:
all she knew was that he had ordered his dinner to be ready at his usual
time that evening. With that the two men had to be content, and they
went back to the police-station still discussing the situation. And they
were still discussing it an hour later when a telegram was handed to
Mitchington, who tore it open, glanced over its contents and passed it
to his companion who read it aloud.

“Meet me with Jettison Wrychester Station on arrival of five-twenty
express from London mystery cleared up guilty men known--Ransford.”

Jettison handed the telegram back.

“A man of his word!” he said. “He mentioned two days--he's done it in
one! And now, my lad--do you notice?--he says men, not man! It's as I
said--there's been more than one of 'em in this affair. Now then--who
are they?”


CHAPTER XXI. THE SAXONSTEADE ARMS


Bryce had ridden away on his bicycle from Wrychester that morning intent
on a new piece of diplomacy. He had sat up thinking for some time after
the two police officials had left him at midnight, and it had occurred
to him that there was a man from whom information could be had of whose
services he had as yet made no use but who must be somewhere in the
neighbourhood--the man Glassdale. Glassdale had been in Wrychester the
previous evening; he could scarcely be far away now; there was certainly
one person who would know where he could be found, and that person
was the Duke of Saxonsteade. Bryce knew the Duke to be an extremely
approachable man, a talkative, even a garrulous man, given to holding
converse with anybody about anything, and he speedily made up his mind
to ride over to Saxonsteade, invent a plausible excuse for his call,
and get some news out of his Grace. Even if Glassdale had left the
neighbourhood, there might be fragments of evidence to pick up from
the Duke, for Glassdale, he knew, had given his former employer the
information about the stolen jewels and would, no doubt, have added
more about his acquaintance with Braden. And before Bryce came to his
dreamed-of master-stroke in that matter, there were one or two things he
wanted to clear up, to complete his double net, and he had an idea that
an hour's chat with Glassdale would yield all that he desired.

The active brain that had stood Bryce in good stead while he spun his
meshes and devised his schemes was more active than ever that early
summer morning. It was a ten-mile ride through woods and valleys to
Saxonsteade, and there were sights and beauties of nature on either side
of him which any other man would have lingered to admire and most men
would have been influenced by. But Bryce had no eyes for the clouds over
the copper-crowned hills or the mystic shadows in the deep valleys or
the new buds in the hedgerows, and no thought for the rustic folk whose
cottages he passed here and there in a sparsely populated country. All
his thoughts were fixed on his schemes, almost as mechanically as his
eyes followed the white road in front of his wheel. Ever since he had
set out on his campaign he had regularly taken stock of his position; he
was for ever reckoning it up. And now, in his opinion, everything looked
very promising. He had--so far as he was aware--created a definite
atmosphere of suspicion around and against Ransford--it needed only a
little more suggestion, perhaps a little more evidence to bring about
Ransford's arrest. And the only question which at all troubled Bryce
was--should he let matters go to that length before putting his
ultimatum before Mary Bewery, or should he show her his hand first? For
Bryce had so worked matters that a word from him to the police would
damn Ransford or save him--and now it all depended, so far as Bryce
himself was concerned, on Mary Bewery as to which word should be said.
Elaborate as the toils were which he had laid out for Ransford to the
police, he could sweep them up and tear them away with a sentence
of added knowledge--if Mary Bewery made it worth his while. But
first--before coming to the critical point--there was yet certain
information which he desired to get, and he felt sure of getting it if
he could find Glassdale. For Glassdale, according to all accounts, had
known Braden intimately of late years, and was most likely in possession
of facts about him--and Bryce had full confidence in himself as an
interviewer of other men and a supreme belief that he could wheedle
a secret out of anybody with whom he could procure an hour's quiet
conversation.

As luck would have it, Bryce had no need to make a call upon the
approachable and friendly Duke. Outside the little village at
Saxonsteade, on the edge of the deep woods which fringed the ducal park,
stood an old wayside inn, a relic of the coaching days, which bore
on its sign the ducal arms. Into its old stone hall marched Bryce to
refresh himself after his ride, and as he stood at the bow-windowed bar,
he glanced into the garden beyond and there saw, comfortably smoking his
pipe and reading the newspaper, the very man he was looking for.

Bryce had no spice of bashfulness, no want of confidence anywhere in his
nature; he determined to attack Glassdale there and then. But he took
a good look at his man before going out into the garden to him. A plain
and ordinary sort of fellow, he thought; rather over middle age, with
a tinge of grey in his hair and moustache; prosperous looking and
well-dressed, and at that moment of the appearance of what he was
probably taken for by the inn people--a tourist. Whether he was the sort
who would be communicative or not, Bryce could not tell from outward
signs, but he was going to try, and he presently found his card-case,
took out a card, and strolling down the garden to the shady spot
in which Glassdale sat, assumed his politest and suavest manner and
presented himself.

“Allow me, sir,” he said, carefully abstaining from any mention of
names. “May I have the pleasure of a few minutes' conversation with
you?”

Glassdale cast a swift glance of surprise, not unmingled with suspicion,
at the intruder--the sort of glance that a man used to watchfulness
would throw at anybody, thought Bryce. But his face cleared as he read
the card, though it was still doubtful as he lifted it again.

“You've the advantage of me, sir,” he said. “Dr. Bryce, I see. But--”

Bryce smiled and dropped into a garden chair at Glassdale's side.

“You needn't be afraid of talking to me,” he answered. “I'm well known
in Wrychester. The Duke,” he went on, nodding his head in the direction
of the great house which lay behind the woods at the foot of the garden,
“knows me well enough--in fact, I was on my way to see his Grace now, to
ask him if he could tell me where you could be found. The fact is,
I'm aware of what happened last night--the jewel affair, you
know--Mitchington told me--and of your friendship with Braden, and I
want to ask you a question or two about Braden.”

Glassdale, who had looked somewhat mystified at the beginning of this
address, seemed to understand matters better by the end of it.

“Oh, well, of course, doctor,” he said, “if that's it--but, of course--a
word first!--these folk here at the inn don't know who I am or that I've
any connection with the Duke on that affair. I'm Mr. Gordon here--just
staying for a bit.”

“That's all right,” answered Bryce with a smile of understanding. “All
this is between ourselves. I saw you with the Duke and the rest of them
last night, and I recognized you just now. And all I want is a bit of
talk about Braden. You knew him pretty well of late years?”

“Knew him for a good many years,” replied Glassdale. He looked narrowly
at his visitor. “I suppose you know his story--and mine?” he asked.
“Bygone affairs, eh?”

“Yes, yes!” answered Bryce reassuringly. “No need to go into
that--that's all done with.”

“Aye--well, we both put things right,” said Glassdale. “Made
restitution--both of us, you understand. So that is done with? And you
know, then, of course, who Braden really was?”

“John Brake, ex bank-manager,” answered Bryce promptly. “I know all
about it. I've been deeply interested and concerned in his death. And
I'll tell you why. I want to marry his daughter.”

Glassdale turned and stared at his companion.

“His daughter!” he exclaimed. “Brake's daughter! God bless my soul! I
never knew he had a daughter!”

It was Bryce's turn to stare now. He looked at Glassdale incredulously.

“Do you mean to tell me that you knew Brake all those years and that he
never mentioned his children?” he exclaimed.

“Never a word of 'em!” replied Glassdale. “Never knew he had any!”

“Did he never speak of his past?” asked Bryce.

“Not in that respect,” answered Glassdale. “I'd no idea that he was--or
had been--a married man. He certainly never mentioned wife nor children
to me, sir, and yet I knew Brake about as intimately as two men can know
each other for some years before we came back to England.”

Bryce fell into one of his fits of musing. What could be the meaning of
this extraordinary silence on Brake's part? Was there still some hidden
secret, some other mystery at which he had not yet guessed?

“Odd!” he remarked at last after a long pause during which Glassdale had
watched him curiously. “But, did he ever speak to you of an old friend
of his named Ransford--a doctor?”

“Never!” said Glassdale. “Never mentioned such a man!”

Bryce reflected again, and suddenly determined to be explicit.

“John Brake, the bank manager,” he said, “was married at a place called
Braden Medworth, in Leicestershire, to a girl named Mary Bewery. He had
two children, who would be, respectively, about four and one years of
age when his--we'll call it misfortune--happened. That's a fact!”

“First I ever heard of it, then,” said Glassdale. “And that's a fact,
too!”

“He'd also a very close friend named Ransford--Mark Ransford,” continued
Bryce. “This Ransford was best man at Brake's wedding.”

“Never heard him speak of Ransford, nor of any wedding!” affirmed
Glassdale. “All news to me, doctor.”

“This Ransford is now in practice in Wrychester,” said Bryce. “And he
has two young people living with him as his wards--a girl of twenty, a
boy of seventeen--who are, without doubt, John Brake's children. It is
the daughter that I want to marry.”

Glassdale shook his head as if in sheer perplexity.

“Well, all I can say is, you surprise me!” he remarked. “I'd no idea of
any such thing.”

“Do you think Brake came to Wrychester because of that?” asked Bryce.

“How can I answer that, sir, when I tell you that I never heard him
breathe one word of any children?” exclaimed Glassdale. “No! I know his
reason for coming to Wrychester. It was wholly and solely--as far as
I know--to tell the Duke here about that jewel business, the secret of
which had been entrusted to Brake and me by a man on his death-bed in
Australia. Brake came to Wrychester by himself--I was to join him next
morning: we were then to go to see the Duke together. When I got to
Wrychester, I heard of Brake's accident, and being upset by it, I went
away again and waited some days until yesterday, when I made up my mind
to tell the Duke myself, as I did, with very fortunate results. No,
that's the only reason I know of why Brake came this way. I tell you
I knew nothing at all of his family affairs! He was a very close man,
Brake, and apart from his business matters, he'd only one idea in his
head, and that was lodged there pretty firmly, I can assure you!”

“What was it?” asked Bryce.

“He wanted to find a certain man--or, rather, two men--who'd cruelly
deceived and wronged him, but one of 'em in particular,” answered
Glassdale. “The particular one he believed to be in Australia, until
near the end, when he got an idea that he'd left for England; as for
the other, he didn't bother much about him. But the man that he did
want!--ah, he wanted him badly!”

“Who was that man?” asked Bryce.

“A man of the name of Falkiner Wraye,” answered Glassdale promptly. “A
man he'd known in London. This Wraye, together with his partner, a
man called Flood, tricked Brake into lending 'em several thousands
pounds--bank's money, of course--for a couple of days--no more--and
then clean disappeared, leaving him to pay the piper! He was a fool, no
doubt, but he'd been mixed up with them; he'd done it before, and they'd
always kept their promises, and he did it once too often. He let 'em
have some thousands; they disappeared, and the bank inspector happened
to call at Brake's bank and ask for his balances. And--there he was.
And--that's why he'd Falkiner Wraye on his mind--as his one big idea.
T'other man was a lesser consideration, Wraye was the chief offender.”

“I wish you'd tell me all you know about Brake,” said Bryce after a
pause during which he had done some thinking. “Between ourselves, of
course.”

“Oh--I don't know that there's so much secrecy!” replied Glassdale
almost indifferently. “Of course, I knew him first when we were both
inmates of--you understand where; no need for particulars. But after we
left that place, I never saw him again until we met in Australia a few
years ago. We were both in the same trade--speculating in wool. We got
pretty thick and used to see each other a great deal, and of course,
grew confidential. He told me in time about his affair, and how he'd
traced this Wraye to the United States, and then, I think, to New
Zealand, and afterwards to Australia, and as I was knocking about the
country a great deal buying up wool, he asked me to help him, and
gave me a description of Wraye, of whom, he said, he'd certainly heard
something when he first landed at Sydney, but had never been able to
trace afterwards. But it was no good--I never either saw or heard of
Wraye--and Brake came to the conclusion he'd left Australia. And I know
he hoped to get news of him, somehow, when we returned to England.”

“That description, now?--what was it?” asked Bryce.

“Oh!” said Glassdale. “I can't remember it all, now--big man, clean
shaven, nothing very particular except one thing. Wraye, according to
Brake, had a bad scar on his left jaw and had lost the middle finger of
his left hand--all from a gun accident. He--what's the matter, sir?”

Bryce had suddenly let his pipe fall from his lips. He took some time
in picking it up. When he raised himself again his face was calm if a
little flushed from stooping.

“Bit my pipe on a bad tooth!” he muttered. “I must have that tooth seen
to. So you never heard or saw anything of this man?”

“Never!” answered Glassdale. “But I've wondered since this Wrychester
affair if Brake accidentally came across one or other of those men,
and if his death arose out of it. Now, look here, doctor! I read the
accounts of the inquest on Brake--I'd have gone to it if I'd dared, but
just then I hadn't made up my mind about seeing the Duke; I didn't know
what to do, so I kept away, and there's a thing has struck me that I
don't believe the police have ever taken the slightest, notice of.”

“What's that?” demanded Bryce.

“Why, this!” answered Glassdale. “That man who called himself
Dellingham--who came with Brake to the Mitre Hotel at Wrychester--who
is he? Where did Brake meet him? Where did he go? Seems to me the police
have been strangely negligent about that! According to the accounts I've
read, everybody just accepted this Dellingham's first statement, took
his word, and let him--vanish! No one, as far as I know, ever verified
his account of himself. A stranger!”

Bryce, who was already in one of his deep moods of reflection, got up
from his chair as if to go.

“Yes,” he said. “There maybe something in your suggestion. They
certainly did take his word without inquiry. It's true--he mightn't be
what he said he was.”

“Aye, and from what I read, they never followed his movements that
morning!” observed Glassdale. “Queer business altogether! Isn't there
some reward offered, doctor? I heard of some placards or something, but
I've never seen them; of course, I've only been here since yesterday
morning.”

Bryce silently drew some papers from his pocket. From them he extracted
the two handbills which Mitchington had given him and handed them over.

“Well, I must go,” he said. “I shall no doubt see you again in
Wrychester, over this affair. For the present, all this is between
ourselves, of course?”

“Oh, of course, doctor!” answered Glassdale. “Quite so!” Bryce went off
and got his bicycle and rode away in the direction of Wrychester. Had he
remained in that garden he would have seen Glassdale, after reading both
the handbills, go into the house and have heard him ask the landlady at
the bar to get him a trap and a good horse in it as soon as possible;
he, too, now wanted to go to Wrychester and at once. But Bryce was
riding down the road, muttering certain words to himself over and over
again.

“The left jaw--and the left hand!” he repeated. “Left hand--left jaw!
Unmistakable!”


CHAPTER XXII. OTHER PEOPLE'S NOTIONS


The great towers of Wrychester Cathedral had come within Bryce's view
before he had made up his mind as to the next step in this last stage of
his campaign. He had ridden away from the Saxonsteade Arms feeling that
he had got to do something at once, but he was not quite clear in his
mind as to what that something exactly was. But now, as he topped a rise
in the road, and saw Wrychester lying in its hollow beneath him, the
summer sun shining on its red roofs and grey walls, he suddenly came to
a decision, and instead of riding straight ahead into the old city he
turned off at a by-road, made a line across the northern outskirts, and
headed for the golf-links. He was almost certain to find Mary Bewery
there at that hour, and he wanted to see her at once. The time for his
great stroke had come.

But Mary Bewery was not there--had not been there that morning said the
caddy-master. There were only a few players out. In one of them, coming
towards the club-house, Bryce recognized Sackville Bonham. And at sight
of Sackville, Bryce had an inspiration. Mary Bewery would not come up to
the links now before afternoon; he, Bryce, would lunch there and then go
towards Wrychester to meet her by the path across the fields on which
he had waylaid her after his visit to Leicestershire. And meanwhile
he would inveigle Sackville Bonham into conversation. Sackville fell
readily into Bryce's trap. He was the sort of youth who loves to talk,
especially in a hinting and mysterious fashion. And when Bryce, after
treating him to an appetizer in the bar of the club-house, had suggested
that they should lunch together and got him into a quiet corner of the
dining-room, he launched forth at once on the pertinent matter of the
day.

“Heard all about this discovery of those missing Saxonsteade diamonds?”
 he asked as he and Bryce picked up their knives and forks. “Queer
business that, isn't it? Of course, it's got to do with those murders!”

“Think so?” asked Bryce.

“Can anybody think anything else?” said Sackville in his best dogmatic
manner. “Why, the thing's plain. From what's been let out--not much,
certainly, but enough--it's quite evident.”

“What's your theory?” inquired Bryce.

“My stepfather--knowing old bird he is, too!--sums the whole thing up to
a nicety,” answered Sackville. “That old chap, Braden, you know, is in
possession of that secret. He comes to Wrychester about it. But somebody
else knows. That somebody gets rid of Braden. Why? So that the secret'll
be known then only to one--the murderer! See! And why? Why?”

“Well, why?” repeated Bryce. “Don't see, so far.”

“You must be dense, then,” said Sackville with the lofty superiority of
youth. “Because of the reward, of course! Don't you know that there's
been a standing offer--never withdrawn!--of five thousand pounds for
news of those jewels?”

“No, I didn't,” answered Bryce.

“Fact, sir--pure fact,” continued Sackville. “Now, five thousand,
divided in two, is two thousand five hundred each. But five thousand,
undivided, is--what?”

“Five thousand--apparently,” said Bryce.

“Just so! And,” remarked Sackville knowingly, “a man'll do a lot for
five thousand.”

“Or--according to your argument--for half of it,” said Bryce. “What
you--or your stepfather's--aiming at comes to this, that suspicion rests
on Braden's sharer in the secret. That it?”

“And why not?” asked Sackville. “Look at what we know--from the account
in the paper this morning. This other chap, Glassdale, waits a bit until
the first excitement about Braden is over, then he comes forward and
tells the Duke where the Duchess's diamonds are planted. Why? So that he
can get the five thousand pound reward! Plain as a pikestaff! Only, the
police are such fools.”

“And what about Collishaw?” asked Bryce, willing to absorb all his
companion's ideas.

“Part of the game,” declared Sackville. “Same man that got rid of
Braden got rid of that chap! Probably Collishaw knew a bit and had to
be silenced. But, whether that Glassdale did it all off his own bat or
whether he's somebody in with him, that's where the guilt'll be fastened
in the end, my stepfather says. And--it'll be so. Stands to reason!”

“Anybody come forward about that reward your stepfather offered?” asked
Bryce.

“I'm not permitted to say,” answered Sackville. “But,” he added, leaning
closer to his companion across the table, “I can tell you this--there's
wheels within wheels! You understand! And things'll be coming out. Got
to! We can't--as a family--let Ransford lie under that cloud, don't you
know. We must clear him. That's precisely why Mr. Folliot offered his
reward. Ransford, of course, you know, Bryce, is very much to blame--he
ought to have done more himself. And, of course, as my mother and my
stepfather say, if Ransford won't do things for himself, well, we must
do 'em for him! We couldn't think of anything else.”

“Very good of you all, I'm sure,” assented Bryce. “Very thoughtful and
kindly.”

“Oh, well!” said Sackville, who was incapable of perceiving a sneer
or of knowing when older men were laughing at him. “It's one of those
things that one's got to do--under the circumstances. Of course, Miss
Bewery isn't Dr. Ransford's daughter, but she's his ward, and we can't
allow suspicion to rest on her guardian. You leave it to me, my boy, and
you'll see how things will be cleared!”

“Doing a bit underground, eh?” asked Bryce.

“Wait a bit!” answered Sackville with a knowing wink. “It's the least
expected that happens--what?”

Bryce replied that Sackville was no doubt right, and began to talk of
other matters. He hung about the club-house until past three o'clock,
and then, being well acquainted with Mary Bewery's movements from long
observation of them, set out to walk down towards Wrychester, leaving
his bicycle behind him. If he did not meet Mary on the way, he meant to
go to the house. Ransford would be out on his afternoon round of calls;
Dick Bewery would be at school; he would find Mary alone. And it was
necessary that he should see her alone, and at once, for since morning
an entirely new view of affairs had come to him, based on added
knowledge, and he now saw a chance which he had never seen before. True,
he said to himself, as he walked across the links and over the country
which lay between their edge and Wrychester, he had not, even now,
the accurate knowledge as to the actual murderer of either Braden or
Collishaw that he would have liked, but he knew something that would
enable him to ask Mary Bewery point-blank whether he was to be friend or
enemy. And he was still considering the best way of putting his case to
her when, having failed to meet her on the way, he at last turned into
the Close, and as he approached Ransford's house, saw Mrs. Folliot
leaving it.

Mary Bewery, like Bryce, had been having a day of events. To begin with,
Ransford had received a wire from London, first thing in the morning,
which had made him run, breakfastless, to catch the next express. He had
left Mary to make arrangements about his day's work, for he had not
yet replaced Bryce, and she had been obliged to seek out another
practitioner who could find time from his own duties to attend to
Ransford's urgent patients. Then she had had to see callers who came
to the surgery expecting to find Ransford there; and in the middle of a
busy morning, Mr. Folliot had dropped in, to bring her a bunch of roses,
and, once admitted, had shown unmistakable signs of a desire to gossip.

“Ransford out?” he asked as he sat down in the dining-room. “Suppose he
is, this time of day.”

“He's away,” replied Mary. “He went to town by the first express, and I
have had a lot of bother arranging about his patients.”

“Did he hear about this discovery of the Saxonsteade jewels before he
went?” asked Folliot. “Suppose he wouldn't though--wasn't known until
the weekly paper came out this morning. Queer business! You've heard, of
course?”

“Dr. Short told me,” answered Mary. “I don't know any details.”

Folliot looked meditatively at her a moment.

“Got something to do with those other matters, you know,” he remarked.
“I say! What's Ransford doing about all that?”

“About all what, Mr. Folliot?” asked Mary, at once on her guard. “I
don't understand you.”

“You know--all that suspicion--and so on,” said Folliot. “Bad position
for a professional man, you know--ought to clear himself. Anybody been
applying for that reward Ransford offered?”

“I don't know anything about it,” replied Mary. “Dr. Ransford is very
well able to take care of himself, I think. Has anybody applied for
yours?”

Folliot rose from his chair again, as if he had changed his mind about
lingering, and shook his head.

“Can't say what my solicitors may or may not have heard--or done,” he
answered. “But--queer business, you know--and ought to be settled. Bad
for Ransford to have any sort of a cloud over him. Sorry to see it.”

“Is that why you came forward with a reward?” asked Mary.

But to this direct question Folliot made no answer. He muttered
something about the advisability of somebody doing something and went
away, to Mary's relief. She had no desire to discuss the Paradise
mysteries with anybody, especially after Ransford's assurance of the
previous evening. But in the middle of the afternoon in walked Mrs.
Folliot, a rare caller, and before she had been closeted with Mary five
minutes brought up the subject again.

“I want to speak to you on a very serious matter, my dear Miss Bewery,”
 she said. “You must allow me to speak plainly on account of--of several
things. My--my superiority in--in age, you know, and all that!”

“What's the matter, Mrs. Folliot?” asked Mary, steeling herself against
what she felt sure was coming. “Is it--very serious? And--pardon me--is
it about what Mr. Folliot mentioned to me this morning? Because if it
is, I'm not going to discuss that with you or with anybody!”

“I had no idea that my husband had been here this morning,” answered
Mrs. Folliot in genuine surprise. “What did he want to talk about?”

“In that case, what do you want to talk about?” asked Mary. “Though that
doesn't mean that I'm going to talk about it with you.”

Mrs. Folliot made an effort to understand this remark, and after
inspecting her hostess critically for a moment, proceeded in her most
judicial manner.

“You must see, my dear Miss Bewery, that it is highly necessary that
some one should use the utmost persuasion on Dr. Ransford,” she said.
“He is placing all of you--himself, yourself, your young brother--in
most invidious positions by his silence! In society such as--well,
such as you get in a cathedral town, you know, no man of reputation can
afford to keep silence when his--his character is affected.”

Mary picked up some needlework and began to be much occupied with it.

“Is Dr. Ransford's character affected?” she asked. “I wasn't aware of
it, Mrs. Folliot.”

“Oh, my dear, you can't be quite so very--so very, shall we say
ingenuous?--as all that!” exclaimed Mrs. Folliot. “These rumours!--of
course, they are very wicked and cruel ones, but you know they have
spread. Dear me!--why, they have been common talk!”

“I don't think my guardian cares twopence for common talk, Mrs.
Folliot,” answered Mary. “And I am quite sure I don't.”

“None of us--especially people in our position--can afford to ignore
rumours and common talk,” said Mrs. Folliot in her loftiest manner. “If
we are, unfortunately, talked about, then it is our solemn, bounden duty
to put ourselves right in the eyes of our friends--and of society. If
I for instance, my dear, heard anything affecting my--let me say,
moral-character, I should take steps, the most stringent, drastic, and
forceful steps, to put matters to the test. I would not remain under a
stigma--no, not for one minute!”

“I hope you will never have occasion to rehabilitate your moral
character, Mrs. Folliot,” remarked Mary, bending closely over her work.
“Such a necessity would indeed be dreadful.”

“And yet you do not insist--yes, insist!--on Dr. Ransford's taking
strong steps to clear himself!” exclaimed Mrs. Folliot. “Now that,
indeed, is a dreadful necessity!”

“Dr. Ransford,” answered Mary, “is quite able to defend and to take care
of himself. It is not for me to tell him what to do, or even to advise
him what to do. And--since you will talk of this matter, I tell you
frankly, Mrs. Folliot, that I don't believe any decent person in
Wrychester has the least suspicion or doubt of Dr. Ransford. His denial
of any share or complicity in those sad affairs--the mere idea of it as
ridiculous as it's wicked--was quite sufficient. You know very well that
at that second inquest he said--on oath, too--that he knew nothing of
these affairs. I repeat, there isn't a decent soul in the city doubts
that!”

“Oh, but you're quite wrong!” said Mrs. Folliot, hurriedly. “Quite
wrong, I assure you, my dear. Of course, everybody knows what Dr.
Ransford said--very excitedly, poor man, I'm given to understand on the
occasion you refer to, but then, what else could he have said in his own
interest? What people want is the proof of his innocence. I could--but I
won't--tell you of many of the very best people who are--well, very much
exercised over the matter--I could indeed!”

“Do you count yourself among them?” asked Mary in a cold fashion
which would have been a warning to any one but her visitor. “Am I to
understand that, Mrs. Folliot?”

“Certainly not, my dear,” answered Mrs. Folliot promptly. “Otherwise I
should not have done what I have done towards establishing the foolish
man's innocence!”

Mary dropped her work and turned a pair of astonished eyes on Mrs.
Folliot's large countenance.

“You!” she exclaimed. “To establish--Dr. Ransford's innocence? Why, Mrs.
Folliot, what have you done?”

Mrs. Folliot toyed a little with the jewelled head of her sunshade. Her
expression became almost coy.

“Oh, well!” she answered after a brief spell of indecision. “Perhaps it
is as well that you should know, Miss Bewery. Of course, when all this
sad trouble was made far worse by that second affair--the working-man's
death, you know, I said to my husband that really one must do something,
seeing that Dr. Ransford was so very, very obdurate and wouldn't speak.
And as money is nothing--at least as things go--to me or to Mr. Folliot,
I insisted that he should offer a thousand pounds reward to have the
thing cleared up. He's a generous and open-handed man, and he agreed
with me entirely, and put the thing in hand through his solicitors. And
nothing would please us more, my dear, than to have that thousand pounds
claimed! For of course, if there is to be--as I suppose there is--a
union between our families, it would be utterly impossible that any
cloud could rest on Dr. Ransford, even if he is only your guardian. My
son's future wife cannot, of course--”

Mary laid down her work again and for a full minute stared Mrs. Folliot
in the face.

“Mrs. Folliot!” she said at last. “Are you under the impression that I'm
thinking of marrying your son?”

“I think I've every good reason for believing it!” replied Mrs. Folliot.

“You've none!” retorted Mary, gathering up her work and moving towards
the door. “I've no more intention of marrying Mr. Sackville Bonham than
of eloping with the Bishop! The idea's too absurd to--even be thought
of!”

Five minutes later Mrs. Folliot, heightened in colour, had gone.
And presently Mary, glancing after her across the Close, saw Bryce
approaching the gate of the garden.


CHAPTER XXIII. THE UNEXPECTED


Mary's first instinct on seeing the approach of Pemberton Bryce, the one
man she least desired to see, was to retreat to the back of the house
and send the parlourmaid to the door to say her mistress was not at
home. But she had lately become aware of Bryce's curiously dogged
persistence in following up whatever he had in view, and she reflected
that if he were sent away then he would be sure to come back and come
back until he had got whatever it was that he wanted. And after a
moment's further consideration, she walked out of the front door and
confronted him resolutely in the garden.

“Dr. Ransford is away,” she said with almost unnecessary brusqueness.
“He's away until evening.”

“I don't want him,” replied Bryce just as brusquely. “I came to see
you.”

Mary hesitated. She continued to regard Bryce steadily, and Bryce did
not like the way in which she was looking at him. He made haste to speak
before she could either leave or dismiss him.

“You'd better give me a few minutes,” he said, with a note of warning.
“I'm here in your interests--or in Ransford's. I may as well tell you,
straight out, Ransford's in serious and imminent danger! That's a fact.”

“Danger of what?” she demanded.

“Arrest--instant arrest!” replied Bryce. “I'm telling you the
truth. He'll probably be arrested tonight, on his return. There's no
imagination in all this--I'm speaking of what I know. I've--curiously
enough--got mixed up with these affairs, through no seeking of my own,
and I know what's behind the scenes. If it were known that I'm letting
out secrets to you, I should get into trouble. But, I want to warn you!”

Mary stood before him on the path, hesitating. She knew enough to know
that Bryce was telling some sort of truth: it was plain that he had been
mixed up in the recent mysteries, and there was a ring of conviction
in his voice which impressed her. And suddenly she had visions of
Ransford's arrest, of his being dragged off to prison to meet a cruel
accusation, of the shame and disgrace, and she hesitated further.

“But if that's so,” she said at last, “what's the good of coming to me?
I can't do anything!”

“I can!” said Bryce significantly. “I know more--much more--than the
police know--more than anybody knows. I can save Ransford. Understand
that!”

“What do you want now?” she asked.

“To talk to you--to tell you how things are,” answered Bryce. “What harm
is there in that? To make you see how matters stand, and then to show
you what I can do to put things right.”

Mary glanced at an open summer-house which stood beneath the beech trees
on one side of the garden. She moved towards it and sat down there, and
Bryce followed her and seated himself.

“Well--” she said.

Bryce realized that his moment had arrived. He paused, endeavouring
to remember the careful preparations he had made for putting his case.
Somehow, he was not so clear as to his line of attack as he had been ten
minutes previously--he realized that he had to deal with a young woman
who was not likely to be taken in nor easily deceived. And suddenly he
plunged into what he felt to be the thick of things.

“Whether you, or whether Ransford--whether both or either of you, know
it or not,” he said, “the police have been on to Ransford ever since
that Collishaw affair! Underground work, you know. Mitchington has
been digging into things ever since then, and lately he's had a London
detective helping him.”

Mary, who had carried her work into the garden, had now resumed it, and
as Bryce began to talk she bent over it steadily stitching.

“Well?” she said.

“Look here!” continued Bryce. “Has it never struck you--it must have
done!--that there's considerable mystery about Ransford? But whether it
has struck you or not, it's there, and it's struck the police forcibly.
Mystery connected with him before--long before--he ever came here. And
associated, in some way, with that man Braden. Not of late--in years
past. And, naturally, the police have tried to find out what that was.”

“What have they found out?” asked Mary quietly.

“That I'm not at liberty to tell,” replied Bryce. “But I can tell
you this--they know, Mitchington and the London man, that there were
passages between Ransford and Braden years ago.”

“How many years ago?” interrupted Mary.

Bryce hesitated a moment. He had a suspicion that this self-possessed
young woman who was taking everything more quietly than he had
anticipated, might possibly know more than he gave her credit for
knowing. He had been watching her fingers since they sat down in the
summer-house, and his sharp eyes saw that they were as steady as the
spire of the cathedral above the trees--he knew from that that she was
neither frightened nor anxious.

“Oh, well--seventeen to twenty years ago,” he answered. “About that
time. There were passages, I say, and they were of a nature which
suggests that the re-appearance of Braden on Ransford's present stage of
life would be, extremely unpleasant and unwelcome to Ransford.”

“Vague!” murmured Mary. “Extremely vague!”

“But quite enough,” retorted Bryce, “to give the police the suggestion
of motive. I tell you the police know quite enough to know that Braden
was, of all men in the world, the last man Ransford desired to see
cross his path again. And--on that morning on which the Paradise affair
occurred--Braden did cross his path. Therefore, in the conventional
police way of thinking and looking at things, there's motive.”

“Motive for what?” asked Mary.

Bryce arrived here at one of his critical stages, and he paused a moment
in order to choose his words.

“Don't get any false ideas or impressions,” he said at last. “I'm not
accusing Ransford of anything. I'm only telling you what I know the
police think and are on the very edge of accusing him of. To put it
plainly--of murder. They say he'd a motive for murdering Braden--and
with them motive is everything. It's the first thing they seem to think
of; they first question they ask themselves. 'Why should this man have
murdered that man?'--do you see! 'What motive had he?--that's the point.
And they think--these chaps like Mitchington and the London man--that
Ransford certainly had a motive for getting rid of Braden when they
met.”

“What was the motive?” asked Mary.

“They've found out something--perhaps a good deal--about what happened
between Braden and Ransford some years ago,” replied Bryce. “And their
theory is--if you want to know the truth--that Ransford ran away with
Braden's wife, and that Braden had been looking for him ever since.”

Bryce had kept his eyes on Mary's hands, and now at last he saw the
girl's fingers tremble. But her voice was steady enough when she spoke.

“Is that mere conjecture on their part, or is it based on any fact?” she
asked.

“I'm not in full knowledge of all their secrets,” answered Bryce, “but
I've heard enough to know that there's a basis of undeniable fact on
which they're going. I know for instance, beyond doubt, that Braden and
Ransford were bosom friends, years ago, that Braden was married to a
girl whom Ransford had wanted to marry, that Braden's wife suddenly
left him, mysteriously, a few years later, and that, at the same time,
Ransford made an equally mysterious disappearance. The police know
all that. What is the inference to be drawn? What inference would any
one--you yourself, for example--draw?”

“None, till I've heard what Dr. Ransford had to say,” replied Mary.

Bryce disliked that ready retort. He was beginning to feel that he was
being met by some force stronger than his own.

“That's all very well,” he remarked. “I don't say that I wouldn't do the
same. But I'm only explaining the police position, and showing you the
danger likely to arise from it. The police theory is this, as far as
I can make it out: Ransford, years ago, did Braden a wrong, and Braden
certainly swore revenge when he could find him. Circumstances prevented
Braden from seeking him closely for some time; at last they met here, by
accident. Here the police aren't decided. One theory is that there was
an altercation, blows, a struggle, in the course of which Braden met his
death; the other is that Ransford deliberately took Braden up into the
gallery and flung him through that open doorway--”

“That,” observed Mary, with something very like a sneer, “seems so
likely that I should think it would never occur to anybody but the sort
of people you're telling me of! No man of any real sense would believe
it for a minute!”

“Some people of plain common sense do believe it for all that!” retorted
Bryce. “For it's quite possible. But as I say, I'm only repeating. And
of course, the rest of it follows on that. The police theory is that
Collishaw witnessed Braden's death at Ransford's hands, that Ransford
got to know that Collishaw knew of that, and that he therefore quietly
removed Collishaw. And it is on all that that they're going, and will
go. Don't ask me if I think they're right or wrong! I'm only telling you
what I know so as to show you what danger Ransford is in.”

Mary made no immediate answer, and Bryce sat watching her. Somehow--he
was at a loss to explain it to himself--things were not going as he had
expected. He had confidently believed that the girl would be frightened,
scared, upset, ready to do anything that he asked or suggested. But she
was plainly not frightened. And the fingers which busied themselves with
the fancy-work had become steady again, and her voice had been steady
all along.

“Pray,” she asked suddenly, and with a little satirical inflection of
voice which Brice was quick to notice, “pray, how is it that you--not
a policeman, not a detective!--come to know so much of all this?
Since when were you taken into the confidence of Mitchington and the
mysterious person from London?”

“You know as well as I do that I have been dragged into the case against
my wishes,” answered Bryce almost sullenly. “I was fetched to Braden--I
saw him die. It was I who found Collishaw--dead. Of course, I've been
mixed up, whether I would or not, and I've had to see a good deal of the
police, and naturally I've learnt things.”

Mary suddenly turned on him with a flash of the eye which might have
warned Bryce that he had signally failed in the main feature of his
adventure.

“And what have you learnt that makes you come here and tell me all
this?” she exclaimed. “Do you think I'm a simpleton, Dr. Bryce? You set
out by saying that Dr. Ransford is in danger from the police, and that
you know more--much more than the police! what does that mean? Shall I
tell you? It means that you--you!--know that the police are wrong, and
that if you like you can prove to them that they are wrong! Now, then
isn't that so?”

“I am in possession of certain facts,” began Bryce. “I--”

Mary stopped him with a look.

“My turn!” she said. “You're in possession of certain facts. Now isn't
it the truth that the facts you are in possession of are proof enough to
you that Dr. Ransford is as innocent as I am? It's no use your trying to
deceive me! Isn't that so?”

“I could certainly turn the police off his track,” admitted Bryce, who
was growing highly uncomfortable. “I could divert--”

Mary gave him another look and dropping her needlework continued to
watch him steadily.

“Do you call yourself a gentleman?” she asked quietly. “Or we'll leave
the term out. Do you call yourself even decently honest? For, if you do,
how can you have the sheer impudence--more, insolence!--to come here and
tell me all this when you know that the police are wrong and that you
could--to use your own term, which is your way of putting it--turn them
off the wrong track? Whatever sort of man are you? Do you want to know
my opinion of you in plain words?”

“You seem very anxious to give it, anyway,” retorted Bryce.

“I will give it, and it will perhaps put an end to this,” answered Mary.
“If you are in possession of anything in the way of evidence which would
prove Dr. Ransford's innocence and you are wilfully suppressing it,
you are bad, wicked, base, cruel, unfit for any decent being's society!
And,” she added, as she picked up her work and rose, “you're not going
to have any more of mine!”

“A moment!” said Bryce. He was conscious that he had somehow played all
his cards badly, and he wanted another opening. “You're misunderstanding
me altogether! I never said--never inferred--that I wouldn't save
Ransford.”

“Then, if there's need, which I don't admit, you acknowledge that you
could save him?” she exclaimed sharply. “Just as I thought. Then, if
you're an honest man, a man with any pretensions to honour, why don't
you at once! Any man who had such feelings as those I've just mentioned
wouldn't hesitate one second. But you--you!--you come and--talk about
it! As if it were a game! Dr. Bryce, you make me feel sick, mentally,
morally sick.”

Bryce had risen to his feet when Mary rose, and he now stood staring at
her. Ever since his boyhood he had laughed and sneered at the mere idea
of the finer feelings--he believed that every man has his price--and
that honesty and honour are things useful as terms but of no real
existence. And now he was wondering--really wondering--if this girl
meant the things she said: if she really felt a mental loathing of such
minds and purposes as he knew his own were, or if it were merely acting
on her part. Before he could speak she turned on him again more fiercely
than before.

“Shall I tell you something else in plain language?” she asked. “You
evidently possess a very small and limited knowledge--if you have any at
all!--of women, and you apparently don't rate their mental qualities at
any high standard. Let me tell you that I am not quite such a fool as
you seem to think me! You came here this afternoon to bargain with me!
You happen to know how much I respect my guardian and what I owe him
for the care he has taken of me and my brother. You thought to trade on
that! You thought you could make a bargain with me; you were to save Dr.
Ransford, and for reward you were to have me! You daren't deny it. Dr.
Bryce--I can see through you!”

“I never said it, at any rate,” answered Bryce.

“Once more, I say, I'm not a fool!” exclaimed Mary. “I saw through you
all along. And you've failed! I'm not in the least frightened by what
you've said. If the police arrest Dr. Ransford, Dr. Ransford knows how
to defend himself. And you're not afraid for him! You know you aren't.
It wouldn't matter twopence to you if he were hanged tomorrow, for you
hate him. But look to yourself! Men who cheat, and scheme, and plot, and
plan as you do come to bad ends. Mind yours! Mind the wheel doesn't come
full circle. And now, if you please, go away and don't dare to come near
me again!”

Bryce made no answer. He had listened, with an attempt at a smile, to
all this fiery indignation, but as Mary spoke the last words he was
suddenly aware of something that drew his attention from her and them.
Through an opening in Ransford's garden hedge he could see the garden
door of the Folliots' house across the Close. And at that moment out of
it emerge Folliot himself in conversation with Glassdale!

Without a word, Bryce snatched up his hat from the table of the
summer-house, and went swiftly away--a new scheme, a new idea in his
mind.


CHAPTER XXIV. FINESSE


Glassdale, journeying into Wrychester half an hour after Bryce had left
him at the Saxonsteade Arms, occupied himself during his ride across
country in considering the merits of the two handbills which Bryce had
given him. One announced an offer of five hundred pounds reward for
information in the Braden-Collishaw matter; the other, of a thousand
pounds. It struck him as a curious thing that two offers should be
made--it suggested, at once, that more than one person was deeply
interested in this affair. But who were they?--no answer to that
question appeared on the handbills, which were, in each case, signed by
Wrychester solicitors. To one of these Glassdale, on arriving in the old
city, promptly proceeded--selecting the offerer of the larger reward.
He presently found himself in the presence of an astute-looking man who,
having had his visitor's name sent in to him, regarded Glassdale with
very obvious curiosity.

“Mr. Glassdale?” he said inquiringly, as the caller took an offered
chair. “Are you, by any chance, the Mr. Glassdale whose name is
mentioned in connection with last night's remarkable affair?”

He pointed to a copy of the weekly newspaper, lying on his desk, and to
a formal account of the discovery of the Saxonsteade jewels which had
been furnished to the press, at the Duke's request, by Mitchington.
Glassdale glanced at it--unconcernedly.

“The same,” he answered. “But I didn't call here on that matter--though
what I did call about is certainly relative to it. You've offered a
reward for any information that would lead to the solution of that
mystery about Braden--and the other man, Collishaw.”

“Of a thousand pounds--yes!” replied the solicitor, looking at his
visitor with still more curiosity, mingled with expectancy. “Can you
give any?”

Glassdale pulled out the two handbills which he had obtained from Bryce.

“There are two rewards offered,” he remarked. “Are they entirely
independent of each other?”

“We know nothing of the other,” answered the solicitor. “Except, of
course, that it exists. They're quite independent.”

“Who's offering the five hundred pound one?” asked Glassdale.

The solicitor paused, looking his man over. He saw at once that
Glassdale had, or believed he had, something to tell--and was disposed
to be unusually cautious about telling it.

“Well,” he replied, after a pause. “I believe--in fact, it's an open
secret--that the offer of five hundred pounds is made by Dr. Ransford.”

“And--yours?” inquired Glassdale. “Who's at the back of yours--a
thousand?”

The solicitor smiled.

“You haven't answered my question, Mr. Glassdale,” he observed. “Can you
give any information?”

Glassdale threw his questioner a significant glance.

“Whatever information I might give,” he said, “I'd only give to a
principal--the principal. From what I've seen and known of all this,
there's more in it than is on the surface. I can tell something. I knew
John Braden--who, of course, was John Brake--very well, for some years.
Naturally, I was in his confidence.”

“About more than the Saxonsteade jewels, you mean?” asked the solicitor.

“About more than that,” assented Glassdale. “Private matters. I've no
doubt I can throw some light--some!--on this Wrychester Paradise affair.
But, as I said just now, I'll only deal with the principal. I wouldn't
tell you, for instance--as your principal's solicitor.”

The solicitor smiled again.

“Your ideas, Mr. Glassdale, appear to fit in with our principal's,”
 he remarked. “His instructions--strict instructions--to us are that if
anybody turns up who can give any information, it's not to be given to
us, but to--himself!”

“Wise man!” observed Glassdale. “That's just what I feel about it. It's
a mistake to share secrets with more than one person.”

“There is a secret, then!” asked the solicitor, half slyly.

“Might be,” replied Glassdale. “Who's your client?”

The solicitor pulled a scrap of paper towards him and wrote a few words
on it. He pushed it towards his caller, and Glassdale picked it up and
read what had been written--Mr. Stephen Folliot, The Close.

“You'd better go and see him,” said the solicitor, suggestively. “You'll
find him reserved enough.”

Glassdale read and re-read the name--as if he were endeavouring to
recollect it, or connect it with something.

“What particular reason has this man for wishing to find this out?” he
inquired.

“Can't say, my good sir!” replied the solicitor, with a smile. “Perhaps
he'll tell you. He hasn't told me.”

Glassdale rose to take his leave. But with his hand on the door he
turned.

“Is this gentleman a resident in the place?” he asked.

“A well-known townsman,” replied the solicitor. “You'll easily find his
house in the Close--everybody knows it.”

Glassdale went away then--and walked slowly towards the Cathedral
precincts. On his way he passed two places at which he was half inclined
to call--one was the police-station; the other, the office of the
solicitors who were acting on behalf of the offerer of five hundred
pounds. He half glanced at the solicitor's door--but on reflection went
forward. A man who was walking across the Close pointed out the Folliot
residence--Glassdale entered by the garden door, and in another minute
came face to face with Folliot himself, busied, as usual, amongst his
rose-trees.

Glassdale saw Folliot and took stock of him before Folliot knew that a
stranger was within his gates. Folliot, in an old jacket which he kept
for his horticultural labours, was taking slips from a standard; he
looked as harmless and peaceful as his occupation. A quiet, inoffensive,
somewhat benevolent elderly man, engaged in work, which suggested
leisure and peace.

But Glassdale, after a first quick, searching glance, took another and
longer one--and went nearer with a discreet laugh.

Folliot turned quietly, and seeing the stranger, showed no surprise. He
had a habit of looking over the top rims of his spectacles at people,
and he looked in this way at Glassdale, glancing him up and down calmly.
Glassdale lifted his slouch hat and advanced.

“Mr. Folliot, I believe, sir?” he said. “Mr. Stephen Folliot?”

“Aye, just so!” responded Folliot. “But I don't know you. Who may you
be, now?”

“My name, sir, is Glassdale,” answered the other. “I've just come from
your solicitor's. I called to see him this afternoon--and he told
me that the business I called about could only be dealt with--or
discussed--with you. So--I came here.”

Folliot, who had been cutting slips off a rose-tree, closed his knife
and put it away in his old jacket. He turned and quietly inspected his
visitor once more.

“Aye!” he said quietly. “So you're after that thousand pound reward,
eh?”

“I should have no objection to it, Mr. Folliot,” replied Glassdale.

“I dare say not,” remarked Folliot, dryly. “I dare say not! And which
are you, now?--one of those who think they can tell something, or one
that really can tell? Eh?”

“You'll know that better when we've had a bit of talk, Mr. Folliot,”
 answered Glassdale, accompanying his reply with a direct glance.

“Oh, well, now then, I've no objection to a bit of talk--none whatever!”
 said Folliot. “Here!--we'll sit down on that bench, amongst the roses.
Quite private here--nobody about. And now,” he continued, as Glassdale
accompanied him to a rustic bench set beneath a pergola of rambler
roses, “who are you, like? I read a queer account in this morning's
local paper of what happened in the Cathedral grounds yonder last night,
and there was a person of your name mentioned. Are you that Glassdale?”

“The same, Mr. Folliot,” answered the visitor, promptly.

“Then you knew Braden--the man who lost his life here?” asked Folliot.

“Very well indeed,” replied Glassdale.

“For how long?” demanded Folliot.

“Some years--as a mere acquaintance, seen now and then,” said Glassdale.
“A few years, recently, as what you might call a close friend.”

“Tell you any of his secrets?” asked Folliot.

“Yes, he did!” answered Glassdale.

“Anything that seems to relate to his death--and the mystery about it?”
 inquired Folliot.

“I think so,” said Glassdale. “Upon consideration, I think so!”

“Ah--and what might it be, now?” continued Folliot. He gave Glassdale
a look which seemed to denote and imply several things. “It might be to
your advantage to explain a bit, you know,” he added. “One has to be a
little--vague, eh?”

“There was a certain man that Braden was very anxious to find,” said
Glassdale. “He'd been looking for him for a good many years.”

“A man?” asked Folliot. “One?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, there were two,” admitted Glassdale, “but
there was one in particular. The other--the second--so Braden said,
didn't matter; he was or had been, only a sort of cat's-paw of the man
he especially wanted.”

“I see,” said Folliot. He pulled out a cigar case and offered a cigar to
his visitor, afterwards lighting one himself. “And what did Braden want
that man for?” he asked.

Glassdale waited until his cigar was in full going order before he
answered this question. Then he replied in one word.

“Revenge!”

Folliot put his thumbs in the armholes of his buff waistcoat and leaning
back, seemed to be admiring his roses.

“Ah!” he said at last. “Revenge, now? A sort of vindictive man, was he?
Wanted to get his knife into somebody, eh?”

“He wanted to get something of his own back from a man who'd done him,”
 answered Glassdale, with a short laugh. “That's about it!”

For a minute or two both men smoked in silence. Then Folliot--still
regarding his roses--put a leading question.

“Give you any details?” he asked.

“Enough,” said Glassdale. “Braden had been done--over a money
transaction--by these men--one especially, as head and front of the
affair--and it had cost him--more than anybody would think! Naturally,
he wanted--if he ever got the chance--his revenge. Who wouldn't?”

“And he'd tracked 'em down, eh?” asked Folliot.

“There are questions I can answer, and there are questions I can't
answer,” responded Glassdale. “That's one of the questions I've no reply
to. For--I don't know! But--I can say this. He hadn't tracked 'em down
the day before he came to Wrychester!”

“You're sure of that?” asked Folliot. “He--didn't come here on that
account?”

“No, I'm sure he didn't!” answered Glassdale, readily. “If he had, I
should have known. I was with him till noon the day he came here--in
London--and when he took his ticket at Victoria for Wrychester, he'd no
more idea than the man in the moon as to where those men had got to.
He mentioned it as we were having a bit of lunch together before he got
into the train. No--he didn't come to Wrychester for any such purpose as
that! But--”

He paused and gave Folliot a meaning glance out of the corner of his
eyes.

“Aye--what?” asked Folliot.

“I think he met at least one of 'em here,” said Glassdale, quietly.
“And--perhaps both.”

“Leading to--misfortune for him?” suggested Folliot.

“If you like to put it that way--yes,” assented Glassdale.

Folliot smoked a while in more reflective silence.

“Aye, well!” he said at last. “I suppose you haven't put these ideas of
yours before anybody, now?”

“Present ideas?” asked Glassdale, sharply. “Not to a soul! I've not had
'em--very long.”

“You're the sort of man that another man can do a deal with, I suppose?”
 suggested Folliot. “That is, if it's made worth your while, of course?”

“I shouldn't wonder,” replied Glassdale. “And--if it is made worth my
while.”

Folliot mused a little. Then he tapped Glassdale's elbow.

“You see,” he said, confidentially, “it might be, you know, that I had
a little purpose of my own in offering that reward. It might be that
it was a very particular friend of mine that had the misfortune to have
incurred this man Braden's hatred. And I might want to save him, d'ye
see, from--well, from the consequence of what's happened, and to hear
about it first if anybody came forward, eh?”

“As I've done,” said Glassdale.

“As--you've done,” assented Folliot. “Now, perhaps it would be in the
interest of this particular friend of mine if he made it worth your
while to--say no more to anybody, eh?”

“Very much worth his while, Mr. Folliot,” declared Glassdale.

“Aye, well,” continued Folliot. “This very particular friend would
just want to know, you know, how much you really, truly know! Now, for
instance, about these two men--and one in particular--that Braden was
after? Did--did he name 'em?”

Glassdale leaned a little nearer to his companion on the rose-screened
bench.

“He named them--to me!” he said in a whisper. “One was a man called
Falkiner Wraye, and the other man was a man named Flood. Is that
enough?”

“I think you'd better come and see me this evening,” answered Folliot.
“Come just about dusk to that door--I'll meet you there. Fine roses
these of mine, aren't they?” he continued, as they rose. “I occupy
myself entirely with 'em.”

He walked with Glassdale to the garden door, and stood there watching
his visitor go away up the side of the high wall until he turned into
the path across Paradise. And then, as Folliot was retreating to his
roses, he saw Bryce coming over the Close--and Bryce beckoned to him.


CHAPTER XXV. THE OLD WELL HOUSE


When Bryce came hurrying up to him, Folliot was standing at his garden
door with his hands thrust under his coat-tails--the very picture of a
benevolent, leisured gentleman who has nothing to do and is disposed
to give his time to anybody. He glanced at Bryce as he had glanced at
Glassdale--over the tops of his spectacles, and the glance had no more
than mild inquiry in it. But if Bryce had been less excited, he would
have seen that Folliot, as he beckoned him inside the garden, swept a
sharp look over the Close and ascertained that there was no one about,
that Bryce's entrance was unobserved. Save for a child or two, playing
under the tall elms near one of the gates, and for a clerical figure
that stalked a path in the far distance, the Close was empty of life.
And there was no one about, either, in that part of Folliot's big
garden.

“I want a bit of talk with you,” said Bryce as Folliot closed the door
and turned down a side-path to a still more retired region. “Private
talk. Let's go where it's quiet.”

Without replying in words to this suggestion, Folliot led the way
through his rose-trees to a far corner of his grounds, where an old
building of grey stone, covered with ivy, stood amongst high trees. He
turned the key of a doorway and motioned Bryce to enter.

“Quiet enough in here, doctor,” he observed. “You've never seen this
place--bit of a fancy of mine.”

Bryce, absorbed as he was in the thoughts of the moment, glanced
cursorily at the place into which Folliot had led him. It was a square
building of old stone, its walls unlined, unplastered; its floor paved
with much worn flags of limestone, evidently set down in a long dead age
and now polished to marble-like smoothness. In its midst, set flush with
the floor, was what was evidently a trap-door, furnished with a heavy
iron ring. To this Folliot pointed, with a glance of significant
interest.

“Deepest well in all Wrychester under that,” he remarked. “You'd never
think it--it's a hundred feet deep--and more! Dry now--water gave
out some years ago. Some people would have pulled this old well-house
down--but not me! I did better--I turned it to good account.” He raised
a hand and pointed upward to an obviously modern ceiling of strong oak
timbers. “Had that put in,” he continued, “and turned the top of the
building into a little snuggery. Come up!”

He led the way to a flight of steps in one corner of the lower room,
pushed open a door at their head, and showed his companion into a small
apartment arranged and furnished in something closely approaching
to luxury. The walls were hung with thick fabrics; the carpeting was
equally thick; there were pictures, books, and curiosities; the two or
three chairs were deep and big enough to lie down in; the two windows
commanded pleasant views of the Cathedral towers on one side and of the
Close on the other.

“Nice little place to be alone in, d'ye see?” said Folliot. “Cool in
summer--warm in winter--modern fire-grate, you notice. Come here when I
want to do a bit of quiet thinking, what?”

“Good place for that--certainly,” agreed Bryce.

Folliot pointed his visitor to one of the big chairs and turning to a
cabinet brought out some glasses, a syphon of soda-water, and a heavy
cut-glass decanter. He nodded at a box of cigars which lay open on a
table at Bryce's elbow as he began to mix a couple of drinks.

“Help yourself,” he said. “Good stuff, those.”

Not until he had given Bryce a drink, and had carried his own glass to
another easy chair did Folliot refer to any reason for Bryce's visit.
But once settled down, he looked at him speculatively.

“What did you want to see me about?” he asked.

Bryce, who had lighted a cigar, looked across its smoke at the
imperturbable face opposite.

“You've just had Glassdale here,” he observed quietly. “I saw him leave
you.”

Folliot nodded--without any change of expression.

“Aye, doctor,” he said. “And--what do you know about Glassdale, now?”

Bryce, who would have cheerfully hobnobbed with a man whom he was about
to conduct to the scaffold, lifted his glass and drank.

“A good deal,” he answered as he set the glass down. “The fact is--I
came here to tell you so!--I know a good deal about everything.”

“A wide term!” remarked Folliot. “You've got some limitation to it, I
should think. What do you mean by--everything?”

“I mean about recent matters,” replied Bryce. “I've interested myself in
them--for reasons of my own. Ever since Braden was found at the foot
of those stairs in Paradise, and I was fetched to him, I've interested
myself. And--I've discovered a great deal--more, much more than's known
to anybody.”

Folliot threw one leg over the other and began to jog his foot.

“Oh!” he said after a pause. “Dear me! And--what might you know, now,
doctor? Aught you can tell me eh?”

“Lots!” answered Bryce. “I came to tell you--on seeing that Glassdale
had been with you. Because--I was with Glassdale this morning.”

Folliot made no answer. But Bryce saw that his cool, almost indifferent
manner was changing--he was beginning, under the surface, to get
anxious.

“When I left Glassdale--at noon,” continued Bryce, “I'd no idea--and I
don't think he had--that he was coming to see you. But I know what put
the notion into his head. I gave him copies of those two reward bills.
He no doubt thought he might make a bit--and so he came in to town,
and--to you.”

“Well?” asked Folliot.

“I shouldn't wonder,” remarked Bryce, reflectively, and almost as if
speaking to himself, “I shouldn't at all wonder if Glassdale's the sort
of man who can be bought. He, no doubt, has his price. But all that
Glassdale knows is nothing--to what I know.”

Folliot had allowed his cigar to go out. He threw it away, took a fresh
one from the box, and slowly struck a match and lighted it.

“What might you know, now?” he asked after another pause.

“I've a bit of a faculty for finding things out,” answered Bryce boldly.
“And I've developed it. I wanted to know all about Braden--and about
who killed him--and why. There's only one way of doing all that sort
of thing, you know. You've got to go back--a long way back--to the very
beginnings. I went back--to the time when Braden was married. Not as
Braden, of course--but as who he really was--John Brake. That was at a
place called Braden Medworth, near Barthorpe, in Leicestershire.”

He paused there, watching Folliot. But Folliot showed no more than close
attention, and Bryce went on.

“Not much in that--for the really important part of the story,” he
continued. “But Brake had other associations with Barthorpe--a bit
later. He got to know--got into close touch with a Barthorpe man who,
about the time of Brake's marriage, left Barthorpe and settled in
London. Brake and this man began to have some secret dealings together.
There was another man in with them, too--a man who was a sort of partner
of the Barthorpe man's. Brake had evidently a belief in these men, and
he trusted them--unfortunately for himself he sometimes trusted the
bank's money to them. I know what happened--he used to let them have
money for short financial transactions--to be refunded within a very
brief space. But--he went to the fire too often, and got his fingers
burned in the end. The two men did him--one of them in particular--and
cleared out. He had to stand the racket. He stood it--to the tune of ten
years' penal servitude. And, naturally, when he'd finished his time, he
wanted to find those two men--and began a long search for them. Like to
know the names of the men, Mr. Folliot?”

“You might mention 'em--if you know 'em,” answered Folliot.

“The name of the particular one was Wraye--Falkiner Wraye,” replied
Bryce promptly. “Of the other--the man of lesser importance--Flood.”

The two men looked quietly at each other for a full moment's silence.
And it was Bryce who first spoke with a ring of confidence in his tone
which showed that he knew he had the whip hand.

“Shall I tell you something about Falkiner Wraye?” he asked. “I
will!--it's deeply interesting. Mr. Falkiner Wraye, after cheating
and deceiving Brake, and leaving him to pay the penalty of his
over-trustfulness, cleared out of England and carried his money-making
talents to foreign parts. He succeeded in doing well--he would!--and
eventually he came back and married a rich widow and settled himself
down in an out-of-the-world English town to grow roses. You're Falkiner
Wraye, you know, Mr. Folliot!”

Bryce laughed as he made this direct accusation, and sitting forward in
his chair, pointed first to Folliot's face and then to his left hand.

“Falkiner Wraye,” he said, “had an unfortunate gun accident in his youth
which marked him for life. He lost the middle finger of his left hand,
and he got a bad scar on his left jaw. There they are, those marks!
Fortunate for you, Mr. Folliot, that the police don't know all that I
know, for if they did, those marks would have done for you days ago!”
 For a minute or two Folliot sat joggling his leg--a bad sign in him of
rising temper if Bryce had but known it. While he remained silent he
watched Bryce narrowly, and when he spoke, his voice was calm as ever.

“And what use do you intend to put your knowledge to, if one may ask?”
 he inquired, half sneeringly. “You said just now that you'd no doubt
that man Glassdale could be bought, and I'm inclining to think that
you're one of those men that have their price. What is it?”

“We've not come to that,” retorted Bryce. “You're a bit mistaken. If I
have my price, it's not in the same commodity that Glassdale would want.
But before we do any talking about that sort of thing, I want to add to
my stock of knowledge. Look here! We'll be candid. I don't care a snap
of my fingers that Brake, or Braden's dead, or that Collishaw's dead,
nor if one had his neck broken and the other was poisoned, but--whose
hand was that which the mason, Varner, saw that morning, when Brake was
flung out of that doorway? Come, now!--whose?”

“Not mine, my lad!” answered Folliot, confidently. “That's a fact?”

Bryce hesitated, giving Folliot a searching look. And Folliot nodded
solemnly. “I tell you, not mine!” he repeated. “I'd naught to do with
it!”

“Then who had?” demanded Bryce. “Was it the other man--Flood? And if so,
who is Flood?”

Folliot got up from his chair and, cigar between his lips and hands
under the tails of his old coat, walked silently about the quiet room
for awhile. He was evidently thinking deeply, and Bryce made no attempt
to disturb him. Some minutes went by before Folliot took the cigar from
his lips and leaning against the chimneypiece looked fixedly at his
visitor.

“Look here, my lad!” he said, earnestly. “You're no doubt, as you say, a
good hand at finding things out, and you've doubtless done a good bit of
ferreting, and done it well enough in your own opinion. But there's
one thing you can't find out, and the police can't find out either, and
that's the precise truth about Braden's death. I'd no hand in it--it
couldn't be fastened on to me, anyhow.”

Bryce looked up and interjected one word.

“Collishaw?”

“Nor that, neither,” answered Folliot, hastily. “Maybe I know something
about both, but neither you nor the police nor anybody could fasten me
to either matter! Granting all you say to be true, where's the positive
truth?”

“What about circumstantial evidence,” asked Bryce.

“You'd have a job to get it,” retorted Folliot. “Supposing that all you
say is true about--about past matters? Nothing can prove--nothing!--that
I ever met Braden that morning. On the other hand, I can prove, easily,
that I never did meet him; I can account for every minute of my time
that day. As to the other affair--not an ounce of direct evidence!”

“Then--it was the other man!” exclaimed Bryce. “Now then, who is he?”

Folliot replied with a shrewd glance.

“A man who by giving away another man gave himself away would be a
damned fool!” he answered. “If there is another man--”

“As if there must be!” interrupted Bryce.

“Then he's safe!” concluded Folliot. “You'll get nothing from me about
him!”

“And nobody can get at you except through him?” asked Bryce.

“That's about it,” assented Folliot laconically.

Bryce laughed cynically.

“A pretty coil!” he said with a sneer. “Here! You talked about my price.
I'm quite content to hold my tongue if you'd tell me something about
what happened seventeen years ago.”

“What?” asked Folliot.

“You knew Brake, you must have known his family affairs,” said Bryce.
“What became of Brake's wife and children when he went to prison?”

Folliot shook his head, and it was plain to Bryce that his gesture of
dissent was genuine.

“You're wrong,” he answered. “I never at any time knew anything of
Brake's family affairs. So little indeed, that I never even knew he was
married.”

Bryce rose to his feet and stood staring.

“What!” he exclaimed. “You mean to tell me that, even now, you don't
know that Brake had two children, and that--that--oh, it's incredible!”

“What's incredible?” asked Folliot. “What are you talking about?”

Bryce in his eagerness and surprise grasped Folliot's arm and shook it.

“Good heavens, man!” he said. “Those two wards of Ransford's are Brake's
girl and boy! Didn't you know that, didn't you?”

“Never!” answered Folliot. “Never! And who's Ransford, then? I never
heard Brake speak of any Ransford! What game is all this? What--”

Before Bryce could reply, Folliot suddenly started, thrust his companion
aside and went to one of the windows. A sharp exclamation from him took
Bryce to his side. Folliot lifted a shaking hand and pointed into the
garden.

“There!” he whispered. “Hell and--What's this mean?”

Bryce looked in the direction pointed out. Behind the pergola of rambler
roses the figures of men were coming towards the old well-house led by
one of Folliot's gardeners. Suddenly they emerged into full view, and
in front of the rest was Mitchington and close behind him the detective,
and behind him--Glassdale!


CHAPTER XXVI. THE OTHER MAN


It was close on five o'clock when Glassdale, leaving Folliot at his
garden door, turned the corner into the quietness of the Precincts. He
walked about there a while, staring at the queer old houses with eyes
which saw neither fantastic gables nor twisted chimneys. Glassdale
was thinking. And the result of his reflections was that he suddenly
exchanged his idle sauntering for brisker steps and walked sharply round
to the police-station, where he asked to see Mitchington.

Mitchington and the detective were just about to walk down to the
railway-station to meet Ransford, in accordance with his telegram. At
sight of Glassdale they went back into the inspector's office. Glassdale
closed the door and favoured them with a knowing smile.

“Something else for you, inspector!” he said. “Mixed up a bit with last
night's affair, too. About these mysteries--Braden and Collishaw--I can
tell you one man who's in them.”

“Who, then?” demanded Mitchington.

Glassdale went a step nearer to the two officials and lowered his voice.

“The man who's known here as Stephen Folliot,” he answered. “That's a
fact!”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mitchington. Then he laughed incredulously. “Can't
believe it!” he continued. “Mr. Folliot! Must be some mistake!”

“No mistake,” replied Glassdale. “Besides, Folliot's only an assumed
name. That man is really one Falkiner Wraye, the man Braden, or Brake,
was seeking for many a year, the man who cheated Brake and got him into
trouble. I tell you it's a fact! He's admitted it, or as good as done
so, to me just now.”

“To you? And--let you come away and spread it?” exclaimed Mitchington.
“That's incredible! more astonishing than the other!”

Glassdale laughed.

“Ah, but I let him think I could be squared, do you see?” he said.
“Hush-money, you know. He's under the impression that I'm to go back to
him this evening to settle matters. I knew so much--identified him, as
a matter of fact--that he'd no option. I tell you he's been in at both
these affairs--certain! But--there's another man.”

“Who's he?” demanded Mitchington.

“Can't say, for I don't know, though I've an idea he'll be a fellow that
Brake was also wanting to find,” replied Glassdale. “But anyhow, I
know what I'm talking about when I tell you of Folliot. You'd better do
something before he suspects me.”

Mitchington glanced at the clock.

“Come with us down to the station,” he said. “Dr. Ransford's coming in
on this express from town; he's got news for us. We'd better hear that
first. Folliot!--good Lord!--who'd have believed or even dreamed it!”

“You'll see,” said Glassdale as they went out.

“Maybe Dr. Ransford's got the same information.” Ransford was out of
the train as soon as it ran in, and hurried to where Mitchington and
his companions were standing. And behind him, to Mitchington's surprise,
came old Simpson Harker, who had evidently travelled with him. With
a silent gesture Mitchington beckoned the whole party into an empty
waiting-room and closed its door on them.

“Now then, inspector,” said Ransford without preface or ceremony,
“you've got to act quickly! You got my wire--a few words will explain
it. I went up to town this morning in answer to a message from the bank
where Braden lodged his money when he returned to England. To tell you
the truth, the managers there and myself have, since Braden's death,
been carrying to a conclusion an investigation which I began on Braden's
behalf--though he never knew of it--years ago. At the bank I met Mr.
Harker here, who had called to find something out for himself. Now
I'll sum things up in a nutshell: for years Braden, or Brake, had been
wanting to find two men who cheated him. The name of one is Wraye, of
the other, Flood. I've been trying to trace them, too. At last we've got
them. They're in this town, and without doubt the deaths of both Braden
and Collishaw are at their door! You know both well enough. Wraye is-”

“Mr. Folliot!” interrupted Mitchington, pointing to Glassdale. “So he's
just told us; he's identified him as Wraye. But the other--who's he,
doctor?”

Ransford glanced at Glassdale as if he wished to question him, but
instead he answered Mitchington's question.

“The other man,” he said, “the man Flood, is also a well-known man to
you. Fladgate!”

Mitchington started, evidently more astonished than by the first news.

“What!” he exclaimed. “The verger! You don't say!”

“Do you remember,” continued Ransford, “that Folliot got Fladgate his
appointment as verger not so very long after he himself came here? He
did, anyway, and Fladgate is Flood. We've traced everything through
Flood. Wraye has been a difficult man to trace, because of his residence
abroad for a long time and his change of name, and so on, and it was
only recently that my agents struck on a line through Flood. But
there's the fact. And the probability is that when Braden came here he
recognized and was recognized by these two, and that one or other
of them is responsible for his death and for Collishaw's too.
Circumstantial evidence, all of it, no doubt, but irresistible! Now,
what do you propose to do?”

Mitchington considered matters for a moment.

“Fladgate first, certainly,” he said. “He lives close by here; we'll go
round to his cottage. If he sees he's in a tight place he may let things
out. Let's go there at once.”

He led the whole party out of the station and down the High Street until
they came to a narrow lane of little houses which ran towards the Close.
At its entrance a policeman was walking his beat. Mitchington stopped to
exchange a few words with him.

“This man Fladgate,” he said, rejoining the others, “lives alone--fifth
cottage down here. He'll be about having his tea; we shall take him by
surprise.” Presently the group stood around a door at which Mitchington
knocked gently, and it was on their grave and watchful faces that a
tall, clean-shaven, very solemn-looking man gazed in astonishment as
he opened the door, and started back. He went white to the lips and his
hand fell trembling from the latch as Mitchington strode in and the rest
crowded behind.

“Now then, Fladgate!” said Mitchington, going straight to the point and
watching his man narrowly, while the detective approached him closely on
the other side. “I want you and a word with you at once. Your real name
is Flood! What have you to say to that? And--it's no use beating about
the bush--what have you to say about this Braden affair, and your share
with Folliot in it, whose real name is Wraye. It's all come out about
the two of you. If you've anything to say, you'd better say it.”

The verger, whose black gown lay thrown across the back of a chair,
looked from one face to another with frightened eyes. It was very
evident that the suddenness of the descent had completely unnerved him.
Ransford's practised eyes saw that he was on the verge of a collapse.

“Give him time, Mitchington,” he said. “Pull yourself together,”
 he added, turning to the man. “Don't be frightened; answer these
questions!”

“For God's sake, gentlemen!” grasped the verger. “What--what is it? What
am I to answer? Before God, I'm as innocent as--as any of you--about Mr.
Brake's death! Upon my soul and honour I am!”

“You know all about it;” insisted Mitchington.

“Come, now, isn't it true that you're Flood, and that Folliot's Wraye,
the two men whose trick on him got Brake convicted years ago? Answer
that!”

Flood looked from one side to the other. He was leaning against his
tea-table, set in the middle of his tidy living room. From the hearth
his kettle sent out a pleasant singing that sounded strangely in
contrast with the grim situation.

“Yes, that's true,” he said at last. “But in that affair I--I wasn't
the principal. I was only--only Wraye's agent, as it were: I wasn't
responsible. And when Mr. Brake came here, when I met him that
morning--”

He paused, still looking from one to another of his audience as if
entreating their belief.

“As sure as I'm a living man, gentlemen!” he suddenly burst out, “I'd no
willing hand in Mr. Brake's death! I'll tell you the exact truth; I'll
take my oath of it whenever you like. I'd have been thankful to tell,
many a time, but for--for Wraye. He wouldn't let me at first, and
afterwards it got complicated. It was this way. That morning--when Mr.
Brake was found dead--I had occasion to go up into that gallery under
the clerestory. I suddenly came on him face to face. He recognized me.
And--I'm telling you the solemn, absolute truth, gentlemen!--he'd no
sooner recognized me than he attacked me, seizing me by the arm. I
hadn't recognized him at first, I did when he laid hold of me. I tried
to shake him off, tried to quiet him; he struggled--I don't know what
he wanted to do--he began to cry out--it was a wonder he wasn't heard in
the church below, and he would have been only the organ was being played
rather loudly. And in the struggle he slipped--it was just by that open
doorway--and before I could do more than grasp at him, he shot through
the opening and fell! It was sheer, pure accident, gentlemen! Upon my
soul, I hadn't the least intention of harming him.”

“And after that?” asked Mitchington, at the end of a brief silence.

“I saw Mr. Folliot--Wraye,” continued Flood. “Just afterwards, that was.
I told him; he bade me keep silence until we saw how things went. Later
he forced me to be silent. What could I do? As things were, Wraye could
have disclaimed me--I shouldn't have had a chance. So I held my tongue.”

“Now, then, Collishaw?” demanded Mitchington. “Give us the truth about
that. Whatever the other was, that was murder!”

Flood lifted his hand and wiped away the perspiration that had gathered
on his face.

“Before God, gentlemen!” he answered. “I know no more--at least, little
more--about that than you do! I'll tell you all I do know. Wraye and I,
of course, met now and then and talked about this. It got to our ears
at last that Collishaw knew something. My own impression is that he
saw what occurred between me and Mr. Brake--he was working somewhere up
there. I wanted to speak to Collishaw. Wraye wouldn't let me, he bade
me leave it to him. A bit later, he told me he'd squared Collishaw with
fifty pounds--”

Mitchington and the detective exchanged looks.

“Wraye--that's Folliot--paid Collishaw fifty pounds, did he?” asked the
detective.

“He told me so,” replied Flood. “To hold his tongue. But I'd scarcely
heard that when I heard of Collishaw's sudden death. And as to how that
happened, or who--who brought it about--upon my soul, gentlemen, I
know nothing! Whatever I may have thought, I never mentioned it to
Wraye--never! I--I daren't! You don't know what a man Wraye is! I've
been under his thumb most of my life and--and what are you going to do
with me, gentlemen?”

Mitchington exchanged a word or two with the detective, and then,
putting his head out of the door beckoned to the policeman to whom he
had spoken at the end of the lane and who now appeared in company with a
fellow-constable. He brought both into the cottage.

“Get your tea,” he said sharply to the verger. “These men will stop with
you--you're not to leave this room.” He gave some instructions to the
two policemen in an undertone and motioned Ransford and the others to
follow him. “It strikes me,” he said, when they were outside in the
narrow lane, “that what we've just heard is somewhere about the truth.
And now we'll go on to Folliot's--there's a way to his house round
here.”

Mrs. Folliot was out, Sackville Bonham was still where Bryce had
left him, at the golf-links, when the pursuers reached Folliot's. A
parlourmaid directed them to the garden; a gardener volunteered the
suggestion that his master might be in the old well-house and showed the
way. And Folliot and Bryce saw them coming and looked at each other.

“Glassdale!” exclaimed Bryce. “By heaven, man!--he's told on you!”

Folliot was still staring through the window. He saw Ransford and Harker
following the leading figures. And suddenly he turned to Bryce.

“You've no hand in this?” he demanded.

“I?” exclaimed Bryce. “I never knew till just now!”

Folliot pointed to the door.

“Go down!” he said. “Let 'em in, bid 'em come up! I'll--I'll settle with
'em. Go!”

Bryce hurried down to the lower apartment. He was filled with
excitement--an unusual thing for him--but in the midst of it, as he made
for the outer door, it suddenly struck him that all his schemings and
plottings were going for nothing. The truth was at hand, and it was not
going to benefit him in the slightest degree. He was beaten.

But that was no time for philosophic reflection; already those outside
were beating at the door. He flung it open, and the foremost men
started in surprise at the sight of him. But Bryce bent forward to
Mitchington--anxious to play a part to the last.

“He's upstairs!” he whispered. “Up there! He'll bluff it out if he can,
but he's just admitted to me--”

Mitchington thrust Bryce aside, almost roughly.

“We know all about that!” he said. “I shall have a word or two for you
later! Come on, now--”

The men crowded up the stairway into Folliot's snuggery, Bryce,
wondering at the inspector's words and manner, following closely behind
him and the detective and Glassdale, who led the way. Folliot was
standing in the middle of the room, one hand behind his back, the other
in his pocket. And as the leading three entered the place he brought
his concealed hand sharply round and presenting a revolver at Glassdale
fired point-blank at him.

But it was not Glassdale who fell. He, wary and watching, started aside
as he saw Folliot's movement, and the bullet, passing between his arm
and body, found its billet in Bryce, who fell, with little more than a
groan, shot through the heart. And as he fell, Folliot, scarcely looking
at what he had done, drew his other hand from his pocket, slipped
something into his mouth and sat down in the big chair behind him
... and within a moment the other men in the room were looking with
horrified faces from one dead face to another.


CHAPTER XXVII. THE GUARDED SECRET


When Bryce had left her, Mary Bewery had gone into the house to await
Ransford's return from town. She meant to tell him of all that Bryce had
said and to beg him to take immediate steps to set matters right, not
only that he himself might be cleared of suspicion but that Bryce's
intrigues might be brought to an end. She had some hope that Ransford
would bring back satisfactory news; she knew that his hurried visit to
London had some connection with these affairs; and she also remembered
what he had said on the previous night. And so, controlling her anger at
Bryce and her impatience of the whole situation she waited as patiently
as she could until the time drew near when Ransford might be expected to
be seen coming across the Close. She knew from which direction he would
come, and she remained near the dining-room window looking out for him.
But six o'clock came and she had seen no sign of him; then, as she was
beginning to think that he had missed the afternoon train she saw
him, at the opposite side of the Close, talking earnestly to Dick,
who presently came towards the house while Ransford turned back into
Folliot's garden.

Dick Bewery came hurriedly in. His sister saw at once that he had just
heard news which had had a sobering effect on his usually effervescent
spirits. He looked at her as if he wondered exactly how to give her his
message.

“I saw you with the doctor just now,” she said, using the term by which
she and her brother always spoke of their guardian. “Why hasn't he come
home?”

Dick came close to her, touching her arm.

“I say!” he said, almost whispering. “Don't be frightened--the doctor's
all right--but there's something awful just happened. At Folliot's.”

“What” she demanded. “Speak out, Dick! I'm not frightened. What is it?”

Dick shook his head as if he still scarcely realized the full
significance of his news.

“It's all a licker to me yet!” he answered. “I don't understand it--I
only know what the doctor told me--to come and tell you. Look here, it's
pretty bad. Folliot and Bryce are both dead!”

In spite of herself Mary started back as from a great shock and clutched
at the table by which they were standing.

“Dead!” she exclaimed. “Why--Bryce was here, speaking to me, not an hour
ago!”

“Maybe,” said Dick. “But he's dead now. The fact is, Folliot shot him
with a revolver--killed him on the spot. And then Folliot poisoned
himself--took the same stuff, the doctor said, that finished that chap
Collishaw, and died instantly. It was in Folliot's old well-house. The
doctor was there and the police.”

“What does it all mean?” asked Mary.

“Don't know. Except this,” added Dick; “they've found out about those
other affairs--the Braden and the Collishaw affairs. Folliot was
concerned in them; and who do you think the other was? You'd never
guess! That man Fladgate, the verger. Only that isn't his proper name
at all. He and Folliot finished Braden and Collishaw, anyway. The police
have got Fladgate, and Folliot shot Bryce and killed himself just when
they were going to take him.”

“The doctor told you all this?” asked Mary.

“Yes,” replied Dick. “Just that and no more. He called me in as I was
passing Folliot's door. He's coming over as soon as he can. Whew! I say,
won't there be some fine talk in the town! Anyway, things'll be cleared
up now. What did Bryce want here?”

“Never mind; I can't talk of it, now,” answered Mary. She was already
thinking of how Bryce had stood before her, active and alive, only an
hour earlier; she was thinking, too, of her warning to him. “It's all
too dreadful! too awful to understand!”

“Here's the doctor coming now,” said Dick, turning to the window. “He'll
tell more.”

Mary looked anxiously at Ransford as he came hastening in. He looked
like a man who has just gone through a crisis and yet she was somehow
conscious that there was a certain atmosphere of relief about him, as
though some great weight had suddenly been lifted. He closed the door
and looked straight at her.

“Dick has told you?” he asked.

“All that you told me,” said Dick.

Ransford pulled off his gloves and flung them on the table with
something of a gesture of weariness. And at that Mary hastened to speak.

“Don't tell any more--don't say anything--until you feel able,” she
said. “You're tired.”

“No!” answered Ransford. “I'd rather say what I have to say now--just
now! I've wanted to tell both of you what all this was, what it meant,
everything about it, and until today, until within the last few hours,
it was impossible, because I didn't know everything. Now I do! I even
know more than I did an hour ago. Let me tell you now and have done with
it. Sit down there, both of you, and listen.”

He pointed to a sofa near the hearth, and the brother and sister sat
down, looking at him wonderingly. Instead of sitting down himself he
leaned against the edge of the table, looking down at them.

“I shall have to tell you some sad things,” he said diffidently. “The
only consolation is that it's all over now, and certain matters are, or
can be, cleared and you'll have no more secrets. Nor shall I! I've had
to keep this one jealously guarded for seventeen years! And I never
thought it could be released as it has been, in this miserable and
terrible fashion! But that's done now, and nothing can help it. And
now, to make everything plain, just prepare yourselves to hear something
that, at first, sounds very trying. The man whom you've heard of as
John Braden, who came to his death--by accident, as I now firmly
believe--there in Paradise, was, in reality, John Brake--your father!”

Ransford looked at his two listeners anxiously as he told this. But he
met no sign of undue surprise or emotion. Dick looked down at his toes
with a little frown, as if he were trying to puzzle something out; Mary
continued to watch Ransford with steady eyes.

“Your father--John Brake,” repeated Ransford, breathing more freely now
that he had got the worst news out. “I must go back to the beginning
to make things clear to you about him and your mother. He was a close
friend of mine when we were young men in London; he a bank manager;
I, just beginning my work. We used to spend our holidays together in
Leicestershire. There we met your mother, whose name was Mary Bewery. He
married her; I was his best man. They went to live in London, and from
that time I did not see so much of them, only now and then. During those
first years of his married life Brake made the acquaintance of a man who
came from the same part of Leicestershire that we had met your mother
in--a man named Falkiner Wraye. I may as well tell you that Falkiner
Wraye and Stephen Folliot were one and the same person.”

Ransford paused, observing that Mary wished to ask a question.

“How long have you known that?” she asked.

“Not until today,” replied Ransford promptly. “Never had the ghost of
a notion of it! If I only had known--but, I hadn't! However, to go
back--this man Wraye, who appears always to have been a perfect master
of plausibility, able to twist people round his little finger, somehow
got into close touch with your father about financial matters. Wraye was
at that time a sort of financial agent in London, engaging in various
doings which, I should imagine, were in the nature of gambles. He was
assisted in these by a man who was either a partner with him or a very
confidential clerk or agent, one Flood, who is identical with the man
you have known lately as Fladgate, the verger. Between them, these two
appear to have cajoled or persuaded your father at times to do very
foolish and injudicious things which were, to put it briefly and
plainly, the lendings of various sums of money as short loans for their
transactions. For some time they invariably kept their word to him, and
the advances were always repaid promptly. But eventually, when they had
borrowed from him a considerable sum--some thousands of pounds--for
a deal which was to be carried through within a couple of days, they
decamped with the money, and completely disappeared, leaving your father
to bear the consequences. You may easily understand what followed.
The money which Brake had lent them was the bank's money. The bank
unexpectedly came down on him for his balance, the whole thing was
found out, and he was prosecuted. He had no defence--he was, of course,
technically guilty--and he was sent to penal servitude.”

Ransford had dreaded the telling of this but Mary made no sign, and Dick
only rapped out a sharp question.

“He hadn't meant to rob the bank for himself, anyway, had he?” he asked.

“No, no! not at all!” replied Ransford hastily. “It was a bad error
of judgment on his part, Dick, but he--he'd relied on these men, more
particularly on Wraye, who'd been the leading spirit. Well, that was
your father's sad fate. Now we come to what happened to your mother and
yourselves. Just before your father's arrest, when he knew that all was
lost, and that he was helpless, he sent hurriedly for me and told me
everything in your mother's presence. He begged me to get her and you
two children right away at once. She was against it; he insisted. I took
you all to a quiet place in the country, where your mother assumed her
maiden name. There, within a year, she died. She wasn't a strong woman
at any time. After that--well, you both know pretty well what has been
the run of things since you began to know anything. We'll leave that,
it's nothing to do with the story. I want to go back to your father. I
saw him after his conviction. When I had satisfied him that you and your
mother were safe, he begged me to do my best to find the two men who had
ruined him. I began that search at once. But there was not a trace of
them--they had disappeared as completely as if they were dead. I used
all sorts of means to trace them--without effect. And when at last your
father's term of imprisonment was over and I went to see him on his
release, I had to tell him that up to that point all my efforts had been
useless. I urged him to let the thing drop, and to start life afresh.
But he was determined. Find both men, but particularly Wraye, he would!
He refused point-blank to even see his children until he had found these
men and had forced them to acknowledge their misdeeds as regards him,
for that, of course, would have cleared him to a certain extent. And in
spite of everything I could say, he there and then went off abroad in
search of them--he had got some clue, faint and indefinite, but still
there, as to Wraye's presence in America, and he went after him. From
that time until the morning of his death here in Wrychester I never saw
him again!”

“You did see him that morning?” asked Mary.

“I saw him, of course, unexpectedly,” answered Ransford. “I had been
across the Close--I came back through the south aisle of the Cathedral.
Just before I left the west porch I saw Brake going up the stairs to
the galleries. I knew him at once. He did not see me, and I hurried home
much upset. Unfortunately, I think, Bryce came in upon me in that state
of agitation. I have reason to believe that he began to suspect and to
plot from that moment. And immediately on hearing of Brake's death, and
its circumstances, I was placed in a terrible dilemma. For I had made up
my mind never to tell you two of your father's history until I had been
able to trace these two men and wring out of them a confession which
would have cleared him of all but the technical commission of the crime
of which he was convicted. Now I had not the least idea that the two men
were close at hand, nor that they had had any hand in his death, and so
I kept silence, and let him be buried under the name he had taken--John
Braden.”

Ransford paused and looked at his two listeners as if inviting question
or comment. But neither spoke, and he went on.

“You know what happened after that,” he continued. “It soon became
evident to me that sinister and secret things were going on. There was
the death of the labourer--Collishaw. There were other matters. But even
then I had no suspicion of the real truth--the fact is, I began to have
some strange suspicions about Bryce and that old man Harker--based upon
certain evidence which I got by chance. But, all this time, I had
never ceased my investigations about Wraye and Flood, and when the
bank-manager on whom Brake had called in London was here at the inquest,
I privately told him the whole story and invited his co-operation in
a certain line which I was then following. That line suddenly ran up
against the man Flood--otherwise Fladgate. It was not until this very
week, however, that my agents definitely discovered Fladgate to be
Flood, and that--through the investigations about Flood--Folliot was
found to be Wraye. Today, in London, where I met old Harker at the bank
at which Brake had lodged the money he had brought from Australia, the
whole thing was made clear by the last agent of mine who has had the
searching in hand. And it shows how men may easily disappear from a
certain round of life, and turn up in another years after! When those
two men cheated your father out of that money, they disappeared and
separated--each, no doubt, with his share. Flood went off to some
obscure place in the North of England; Wraye went over to America. He
evidently made a fortune there; knocked about the world for awhile;
changed his name to Folliot, and under that name married a wealthy
widow, and settled down here in Wrychester to grow roses! How and where
he came across Flood again is not exactly clear, but we knew that a
few years ago Flood was in London, in very poor circumstances, and the
probability is that it was then when the two men met again. What we do
know is that Folliot, as an influential man here, got Flood the post
which he has held, and that things have resulted as they have. And
that's all!--all that I need tell you at present. There are details, but
they're of no importance.”

Mary remained silent, but Dick got up with his hands in his pockets.

“There's one thing I want to know,” he said. “Which of those two chaps
killed my father? You said it was accident--but was it? I want to know
about that! Are you saying it was accident just to let things down a
bit? Don't! I want to know the truth.”

“I believe it was accident,” answered Ransford. “I listened most
carefully just now to Fladgate's account of what happened. I firmly
believe the man was telling the truth. But I haven't the least doubt
that Folliot poisoned Collishaw--not the least. Folliot knew that if
the least thing came out about Fladgate, everything would come out about
himself.”

Dick turned away to leave the room.

“Well, Folliot's done for!” he remarked. “I don't care about him, but I
wanted to know for certain about the other.”

        *       *       *       *       *

When Dick had gone, and Ransford and Mary were left alone, a deep
silence fell on the room. Mary was apparently deep in thought, and
Ransford, after a glance at her, turned away and looked out of the
window at the sunlit Close, thinking of the tragedy he had just
witnessed. And he had become so absorbed in his thoughts of it that
he started at feeling a touch on his arm and looking round saw Mary
standing at his side.

“I don't want to say anything now,” she said, “about what you have just
told us. Some of it I had half-guessed, some of it I had conjectured.
But why didn't you tell me! Before! It wasn't that you hadn't
confidence?”

“Confidence!” he exclaimed. “There was only one reason--I wanted to get
your father's memory cleared--as far as possible--before ever telling
you anything. I've been wanting to tell you! Hadn't you seen that I
hated to keep silent?”

“Hadn't you seen that I wanted to share all your trouble about it?” she
asked. “That was what hurt me--because I couldn't!”

Ransford drew a long breath and looked at her. Then he put his hands on
her shoulders.

“Mary!” he said. “You--you don't mean to say--be plain!--you don't mean
that you can care for an old fellow like me?”

He was holding her away from him, but she suddenly smiled and came
closer to him.

“You must have been very blind not to have seen that for a long time!”
 she answered.

 
###################################

5. Reflection¶

Two findings that I find the most intriguing while working through the project is, first, authors of different genders tend to show distinct levels of emotional intensity in their texts. Specifically, even among horror and detective novels, female authors are more likely to apply words of positive sentiments. Secondly, it is interesting to see that depending on whether a piece of text is emotionally positive or negative, we can tell the degree of textual similarity by their sentiment valence. Specifically, when it comes to texts showing negative emotions, novels of high sentiment scores tend to utilize more diverse languages. I think the project findings are much more intriguing than I expected, and most of the findings involve multiple aspects of the novels.

I think the most challenging part of the project is to narrow down and focus on certain dimensions to make sense out of the findings. In particular, I think conducting statistical findings help a lot with coping with this challenge. When I first produced the visualizations of most tests, the findings seem to be all over the place. However, after performing some statistical tests (e.g., independent-sample t-tests, Pearson's correlations), I am able to focus my investigation and discussion on findings that are indeed statistically significant.

As a next step of the study, it may be really interesting to chase down the findings regarding the differences in textual similarity between Cluster 0 and Cluster 1. In fact, no other variables produce as salient differences as cosine distances as the two clusters do. As mentioned above, one initial finding is that texts Cluster 0 seems to apply more quotes and dialogues. Hence, I would consider performing further tests to look at the number of quotes, the amount of text in these quotes, and perhaps, computing cosine distances based solely on texts in quotes. I think these can all be interesting ways to further examine textual similarity in these novels.

6. Responsibility and resources consulted¶

I am working solo on this mini project and am responsible for all work produced in the project.

While working on the project, I frequently referred back to code from previous problem sets. I also referred to documentations on the Seaborn website (https://seaborn.pydata.org/index.html), the Pandas website (https://pandas.pydata.org/), and the Matplotlib website (https://matplotlib.org/) to produce visualizations and to manage data tables for the present project.

	filename	anger	anticipation	disgust	fear	joy	negative	positive	sadness	surprise	trust
0	a_sweet_little_maid	0.006181	0.019300	0.004830	0.008903	0.017581	0.017622	0.031069	0.010336	0.008596	0.020344
1	Mathilda	0.022185	0.028630	0.016718	0.027890	0.028233	0.048147	0.050551	0.031588	0.015134	0.029792
2	the_island_of_doctor_moreau	0.015413	0.014834	0.009992	0.023784	0.012133	0.040644	0.028510	0.017862	0.009529	0.016088
3	herland	0.008604	0.021910	0.006177	0.012169	0.024199	0.019897	0.052624	0.011001	0.010433	0.029808
4	the_dark_other	0.014136	0.017065	0.010390	0.020246	0.013081	0.033743	0.031721	0.018462	0.011475	0.018031
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
133	norton_all_cats_are_gray	0.010759	0.011709	0.009810	0.020570	0.007911	0.025000	0.019304	0.012658	0.007595	0.009810
134	jack_the_fire_dog	0.006306	0.022739	0.007471	0.008465	0.020734	0.023613	0.036688	0.010761	0.009476	0.025036
135	Monte_Cristo	0.011458	0.019597	0.007268	0.015851	0.016989	0.028168	0.043293	0.015249	0.010179	0.028170
136	strange_case_of_drjekyll_and_drhyde	0.016402	0.018473	0.013167	0.023811	0.013523	0.035458	0.038175	0.017308	0.010061	0.023843
137	plague_ship	0.011850	0.019420	0.008562	0.018413	0.010504	0.030363	0.035948	0.013622	0.009157	0.023318

	filename	anger	anticipation	disgust	fear	joy	negative	positive	sadness	surprise	...	country	wordcount	language	pov	gender	horror	detective	adaptation	downloads	source_url
0	a_sweet_little_maid	0.006181	0.019300	0.004830	0.008903	0.017581	0.017622	0.031069	0.010336	0.008596	...	us	37526.0	en	third	female	False	False	False	13.0	https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19025
1	Mathilda	0.022185	0.028630	0.016718	0.027890	0.028233	0.048147	0.050551	0.031588	0.015134	...	gb	33404.0	en	first	female	False	False	False	514.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15238
2	the_island_of_doctor_moreau	0.015413	0.014834	0.009992	0.023784	0.012133	0.040644	0.028510	0.017862	0.009529	...	gb	43611.0	en	first	male	False	False	True	3186.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/159
3	herland	0.008604	0.021910	0.006177	0.012169	0.024199	0.019897	0.052624	0.011001	0.010433	...	us	52139.0	en	first	female	False	False	False	1891.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32
4	the_dark_other	0.014136	0.017065	0.010390	0.020246	0.013081	0.033743	0.031721	0.018462	0.011475	...	us	49983.0	en	third	male	True	False	False	85.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50561
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
133	norton_all_cats_are_gray	0.010759	0.011709	0.009810	0.020570	0.007911	0.025000	0.019304	0.012658	0.007595	...	us	2764.0	en	first	female	False	False	False	387.0	http://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/29019/pg29019.txt
134	jack_the_fire_dog	0.006306	0.022739	0.007471	0.008465	0.020734	0.023613	0.036688	0.010761	0.009476	...	us	48469.0	en	third	female	False	False	False	11.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48861
135	Monte_Cristo	0.011458	0.019597	0.007268	0.015851	0.016989	0.028168	0.043293	0.015249	0.010179	...	fr	464234.0	en	third	male	False	False	True	11093.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1184
136	strange_case_of_drjekyll_and_drhyde	0.016402	0.018473	0.013167	0.023811	0.013523	0.035458	0.038175	0.017308	0.010061	...	us	27622.0	en	third	male	True	False	True	24212.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43
137	plague_ship	0.011850	0.019420	0.008562	0.018413	0.010504	0.030363	0.035948	0.013622	0.009157	...	us	60020.0	en	third	female	False	False	False	210.0	https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16921

	filename	title	author_surname	author_givenname	year	genre	form	country	wordcount	language	pov	gender	horror	detective	adaptation	downloads	source_url
0	Little_Women_Alco	Little Women	Alcott	Louisa May	1868	comedy, children's literature	novel	us	186062.0	en	third	female	False	False	True	11573.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/514/pg514.txt
1	The_Great_God_Pan	The Great God Pan	Arthur	Machen	1894	Horror	novella	gb	21639.0	EN	third	male	True	False	True	1061.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/389/pg389.txt
2	The_Lost_Kafoozalum	The Lost Kafoozalum	Ashwell	Pauline	1960	Science Fiction	novel	gb	22170.0	en	first	female	False	False	False	41.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30427
3	mansfield_park	Mansfield Park	Austen	Jane	1814	romance, historical	novel	gb	159526.0	en	third	female	False	False	True	3613.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/141
4	pride_and_prejudice	Pride and Prejudice	Austen	Jane	1813	fiction, romance	novel	us	121609.0	en	third	female	False	False	True	66796.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
133	the_elusive_pimpernel	The Elusive Pimpernel	Orczy	Baroness Emmuska	1908	Fiction, Adventure	novel	gb	83310.0	en	third	female	False	False	True	170.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2785
134	the_tennant_of_wildfell_hall	The Tennant of Wildfell Hall	Bronte	Anne	1848	Domestic Fiction	novel	gb	166395.0	en	first	female	False	False	True	1176.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/969
135	plague_ship	Plague Ship	Norton	Andre	1956	Science Fiction, Speculative fiction	novel	us	60020.0	en	third	female	False	False	False	210.0	https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16921
136	the_red_house_mystery	The Red House Mystery	Milne	A.A.	1922	Detective, Mystery	novel	gb	60393.0	en	third	male	False	True	False	813.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1872
137	unknown_to_history	Unknown to History: A Story of the Captivity o...	Yonge	Charlotte M.	1882	Biographical Fiction, Historical Fiction	novel	gb	167040.0	en	third	female	False	False	False	62.0	http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4596